The crackle of the wood was lively to his ears and cheerful. The room grew, warm and homelike. When Joan came a little later, he was whistling softly and making tea. He liked her dress. It was dark and soft. He liked the lace fichu at her throat. And he liked the huge old-fashioned cameo that fastened it.

"Hughie is hunting the key to the table-drawer," she said. "I told him about the cabin. It doesn't matter now. Poor Uncle!" She blinked and wiped her eyes. "He didn't mean to be cruel, Kenny. It was the brandy and the pain. If Hughie finds the key, he wondered if you'd go over Uncle's papers to-night. The will is there."

"The will!" said Kenny. He put wood on the fire in some excitement. A miser's will!

Joan's eyes were tender.

"Kenny, how good you've been!"

"Nonsense!" he said brusquely.

"Hughie said so, too. And Hannah and Hetty. Someone had to think and plan and you did it all so well. And, Kenny, I told Hannah, that I'm going to marry you and she cried and kissed me and--and poured a wash-bowl full of tea for Hughie to wash his hands in!"

"The heart of her!" said Kenny. "Come, girleen. The tea's ready. I want to see you pour it."

He watched with his heart in his eyes while she poured his tea. There was a sense of home in the cabin here and the crackle of the fire was the music of comfort. Kenny drank a little of his tea and roved off to the window to light a cigarette.

Beyond the November monotone of trees blazed the red of a sunset. A winter sunset! The fall was over.

"Joan!" he called softly. "Come, jewel machree, the Gray Man is stealing through the pines."

She came at once and slipped into the circle of his arm. Kenny held her tight and found his courage. He was restless, it seemed, and after months of irresponsibility, the thought of work was bothering him badly. Kenny must leave the farm. He must go soon; in a week. And his wife must go with him.

Joan's breathless amazement made him laugh.

"But, Kenny, I--I can't!" she said.

"And I," said Kenny stubbornly, "can't and won't go away and leave you here. The thought of winter and the hills and that barn of a house when the wind is blowing would haunt me. No, no, girleen!"

Joan looked up and smiled and her soft eyes were wistful.

"Kenny, I must study for another year!"

"Another year!" said Kenny blankly. "Colleen, you've the wisdom of the ages in your head right now."

Joan shook her head.

"I must learn to be your wife," she said. "Now it--it dazzles and frightens me--"

"Joan!"

"Have you forgotten, Kenny, that I have lived my life up here in hills and trees. And you--"

"Joan, please!" he begged in distress.

"But I can't forget," said the girl steadily. "Whenever I read the article Garry sent about 'Kennicott O'Neill, brilliant painter'--think of it, Kenny! 'Brilliant painter!'--I go back and read again just to be sure I'm not dreaming. I've been so much alone that the thought of going out into your world with you--terrifies me. I could not bear to have you--sorry!"

"Mavourneen!" he said, shocked.

There were tears upon her cheeks.

"I would only ask that you be your own dear self," said Kenny gently.

"And every man of my world and every woman will stare and envy!"

"I must know music and French," said Joan, checking the need upon her fingers. "I must know how to dance. Now when I talk I must have something to say. Otherwise I feel shy and quiet. I must learn how to talk a great deal without saying anything as you do sometimes."

He laughed in delight at the final need.

"All of it," declared Kenny happily, "I can teach you."

"No," said Joan with a definite shake of her head. "You would kiss me.

And I would always be right even when you knew I was wrong."

His eyes laughed at her mischievously. But he caught her hands and pressed them to his lips.

"Listen, dear," he pleaded. "My world isn't a world of social climbers or sn.o.bs or dollar-worshippers. It's a world of gifted men and women who haven't time to look up your ancestors or your bank balance before they decide to be friendly and kind. I know a poet whose mother was a gypsy, a painter who's a baron and he says he can't help it, a French girl who paints millionaire babies and her father was a tight-rope walker in a circus. My world, Joan, is the happy-go-lucky Bohemia of success and the democracy of real talent. We're actors and painters and sculptors and writers and artists in general and all in all I think we work a little more and play a little more, enjoy a little more and suffer a little more than the rest of the world. Once in a while to be sure a head grows a bit too big and then we all take a bop at it! But the big thing is we're human; just folks, as a man in the grillroom said one night. We're human and we're kind. It's not a smart set, dear. And it's not an ultra-fashionable four-hundredy thing. G.o.d forbid! It's the kind of Bohemia I love. And I'm sure you'll love it too."

Her eyes were shining. In the dusk her color came to him like the glimmer of a flower.

"Kenny!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful it all is, you and all of it!

And yet if--if I feel as I do, you must let me go for a year.

Otherwise if I lack confidence in myself--Oh, can't you see, Kenny, I shall be shy and frightened and always ill at ease!"

"Go!" he echoed blankly.

"Somewhere," said Joan, "to study music and French and how to talk your kind of nonsense. Hannah says there must be money enough in Uncle's estate for that."

"Where," said Kenny, his heart cold, "would you go?"

"I thought," said Joan demurely, "that perhaps I could study in New York where I wouldn't be so--lonesome."

He caught her in his arms.

"Heart of mine!" he whispered. "You thought of that."

"Then," said Joan, "I can learn something of your world before I become a part of it. Don't you see, Kenny? I can look on and learn to understand it. I should like that. Come, painter-man! The tea's cold. And it's growing dark. We'd better light the lamp."

With the tea-pot singing again on the fire and the lamp lighted, Kenny, but momentarily tractable, had another interval of rebellion. Joan, in New York, might better be his wife. Joan, studying, might better have him near to talk his sort of nonsense, listen to her music and make love volubly in French to which she needed the practice of reply. His plea was reckless and tender but Joan shook her head; and Kenny realized with a sigh that her preposterous notion of unfitness was strong in her mind and would not be denied.

"A year, Kenny!" pleaded Joan. "After all, what is a year? And at the end I shall be so much happier and sure." She came shyly to his chair and slipped her arms around his neck. "I want so much to do whatever you want me to do. And yet--and yet, Kenny, feeling as I do, I shall be--Oh, so much happier if you will wait until I can come and say that I am ready to be your wife."

"It will make you happier!" he said abruptly.

"Yes."

"Then, mavourneen," said Kenny, "it shall be as you say. I care more for your happiness than for my own."

They went back through the darkness hand in hand.