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“So,” said she, with a wistful smile, “give me a name.”

He reflected. “You might call me Chang. That was my nickname at school.”

“Chang,” said she. “Chang.” She nodded approvingly. “I like it.... They called me Rix before I came out.”

“Then—good-by, Rix. Thank you for a charming hour.”

“Good-by, Chang,” she said, with a forced little smile and pain in her eyes. “Thank you for—the fire and the chocolate—and—” She hesitated.

“Don’t forget the biscuit.”

“Oh, yes. And for the biscuit.”

As she went reluctantly away he closed the door and, standing well back from the window, watched her gracefully descend the slope of the knoll. Just as she was about to lose sight of the little house she turned and looked back. She could not have seen him, so far back was he; but she waved her hand and smiled precisely as if he were in plain view, waving at her.

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Lake Wauchong is the crowning charm of that whole north New Jersey wilderness, rich though its variety is—watercourses hard to equal in sheer loveliness; lonely mountains from whose steeps look majesty and awe; stretches of stony desolation and of gloomy, bittern-haunted swamp that seem the fitting borderland of an inferno. At the southwestern end of the lake it receives the waters of a creek by way of a small cataract. In the spring, especially in the early spring, when there is most water on the cataract and when the foliage is at its freshest, most exquisite green, the early morning sunbeams make of that little corner of the lake a sort of essence and epitome of the lovely childhood of Nature.