If this could be his life,--an endless summer, with a
search for new plants every morning, and their classification every
evening, with Asenath's help, on the shady portico of Friend
Mitchenor's house,--he could forget his doom, and enjoy the blessing of
life unthinkingly.
The azaleas succeeded to the anemones, the orchis and trillium
followed, then the yellow gerardias and the feathery purple pogonias,
and finally the growing gleam of the golden-rods along the wood-side
and the red umbels of the tall eupatoriums in the meadow announced the
close of summer. One evening, as Richard, in displaying his collection,
brought to view the blood-red leaf of a gum-tree, Asenath exclaimed,--
"Ah, there is the sign! It is early, this year."
"What sign?" he asked.
"That the summer is over. We shall soon have frosty nights, and then
nothing will be left for us except the asters and gentians and
golden-rods."
Was the time indeed so near? A few more weeks, and this Arcadian life
would close. He must go back to the city, to its rectilinear streets,
its close brick walls, its artificial, constrained existence. How could
he give up the peace, the contentment, the hope he had enjoyed through
the summer? The question suddenly took a more definite form in his
mind: How could he give up Asenath? Yes,--the quiet, unsuspecting girl,
sitting beside him, with her lap full of the September blooms he had
gathered, was thenceforth a part of his inmost life.
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