Crimson and golden leaves rained from the maples, and the purple winds of Autumn swept them into drifts at the roadside.  Amethystine haze shimmered in the valleys and lay, cloud-like, upon the distant hills.  Through the long aisles of trees a fairy patter of tiny furred feet rustled back and forth upon the fallen leaves.  Only a dropping nut or a busy squirrel broke the exquisite peace of the forest, where the myriad life of the woods waited, in hushed expectancy, for the tide of the year to turn.

Like a scarlet shuttle plying through the web of Autumn, the big red touring car hummed and whirred, with a happy young man at the wheel and a laughing girl beside him.  Juliet’s momentary self-consciousness was gone, and she was her sunny self again, though she still occasionally wept in secret, longing for her brother.

“Aunt Francesca,” she said, one day, when the two were sewing on dainty garments destined to adorn Juliet, “do you think Romie will ever come back to me?”

“Not in the sense you mean, dear,” replied Madame, gently.  “We live in a world of change and things are never the same, even from day to day.”

“She made him think I was a tomboy, and now she’ll teach him not to love me.  Why does she want everything?”

“Some women do, when they marry.  Many are not content to be sweetheart and wife, but must take the place of mother and sisters too.  But remember, Juliet, when a woman closes a man’s heart against those of his own blood, the one door she has left open will some day be slammed in her own face.”

“And then—?”

“Then the other doors will swing ajar, turning slowly on rusty hinges, but the women for whom they are opened will never cross the threshold again.”

“Why?”

“Because they have ceased to care.  There is nothing so dead as a woman’s dead love.  When the fire goes out and no single ember is left, the ashes are past the power of flame to rekindle.”

“Do you think that, after a while, I won’t care for Romie any more?”

“Not as you used to—­that is impossible even now.”

Juliet sighed and hastily wiped away a tear.  With a quick, sure stroke, her life seemed to have been divided.

“Don’t, dear.  Remember what you have had.  I often think a woman has crossed the line between youth and maturity, when she begins to put away, in the lavender of memory, the lovely things she has had—­and is never to have again.  The after years are made up, so many times, of things one has had—­rounded off and put away forever.”

“I know,” returned Juliet, with a far-away look in her eyes.  “I remember the day I grew up—­almost the hour.  It was the day I came here.”

Madame stooped to kiss the girl’s rosy cheek, then swiftly turned the talk to linen and lace.  Always quick to observe, Juliet had acquired little graces of tone and manner, softened her abruptness, and, guided by loving tact, had begun to bloom like a primrose in a sunny window.