CHAPTER V


The cloud of their first difference had blown over almost before they
felt its shadow, and the sky of love was as clear as the lucid beryl of
the summer night. Yet even the passing shadow of the cloud kept both the
woman and the boy repentant and a little frightened; he, because he
thought he had offended her by some lack of delicacy; she, because she
thought she had shocked him by what he might think was harshness to a
child. Even a week afterward, as they journeyed up to Green Hill in a
dusty accommodation train, there was an uneasy memory of that
cloud--black with Maurice's dullness, and livid with the zigzag flash of
Eleanor's irritation--and then the little shower of tears! ... What had
brought the cloud? Would it ever return? ... As for those twenty
dividing years, they never thought of them!

In the train they held each other's hands under the cover of a
newspaper; and sometimes Maurice's foot touched hers, and then they
looked at each other, and smiled--but each was wondering: his wonder
was, "What made her offended at Edith?" And hers was, "How can he like
to be with an eleven-year-old child!" Their talk, however, confessed no
wonderings! It was the happy commonplace of companionship: Mrs. Newbolt
and her departure for Europe; would Mrs. O'Brien be good to Bingo? what
Maurice's business should be. Then Maurice yawned, and said he was glad
that the commencement exercises at Fern Hill were over; and she said she
was glad, too; she had danced, she said, until she had a pain in her
side! After which he read his paper, and she looked out of the window
at the flying landscape. Suddenly she said:

"That girl you danced with last night--you danced with her three