The stars were peeping through the blue spaces of a white-clouded sky and the moon would be coming by and by. In the garden the flowers were dim, quiet and restful. A kingfisher screamed from the river. An owl hooted in the woods and crickets chirped about them, but every passing sound seemed only to accentuate the stillness in which they were engulfed. Close together they sat on the old porch and she made him tell of everything that had happened since she left the mountains, and she told him of her flight from the mountains and her life in the West—of her father's death and the homesickness of the ones who still were there.
“Bub is a cowboy and wouldn't come back for the world, but I could never have been happy there,” she said, “even if it hadn't been for you—here.”
“I'm just a plain civil engineer, now,” said Hale, “an engineer without even a job and—” his face darkened.
“It's a shame, sweetheart, for you—” She put one hand over his lips and with the other turned his face so that she could look into his eyes. In the mood of bitterness, they did show worn, hollow and sad, and around them the wrinkles were deep.
“Silly,” she said, tracing them gently with her finger tips, “I love every one of them, too,” and she leaned over and kissed them.
“We're going to be happy each and every day, and all day long! We'll live at the Gap in winter and I'll teach.”
“No, you won't.”
“Then I'll teach you to be patient and how little I care for anything else in the world while I've got you, and I'll teach you to care for nothing else while you've got me. And you'll have me, dear, forever and ever——”