there, she would have had it all out with him, freely and frankly.
Somehow she couldn't wave away the idea any longer that the time had
come for her to cross another bridge. Thank God she would still be
young, but the kid of her would be left on the other side. If Martin
had been there, she would have told him some of the things that
Alice had said about being honest and paying up, and left it to him
to say whether the girlhood which she had wanted to spin out was
over and must be put away among her toys.

Alice and Gilbert Palgrave,--curious that it should have been those
two,--had shaken her individualism, as well as something else, vague
and untranslatable, that she couldn't quite grasp, that eluded her
hand. She sat down in the deep chair and with a little smile took up
one of Martin's pipes and looked at it. The good tobaccoey scent of
it took her back to the hill on the edge of the woods, and in her
mind's eye there was a picture of two clean eyes with laughter-lines
coming and going, a strong young face that had already caught the
sun, square shoulders and a broad chest, and a pair of reliable
hands with spatulate fingers clasped round a knee. She could hear
birds calling. Spring was in the air.

Where was Martin?




VII


It was the first dress rehearsal of "The Ukelele Girl," to be