"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest
road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was
summer."

"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't
know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this."

"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:

"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things
get settled a little--isn't there?"

She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they
walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the
tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to
drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in
the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun
fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky,
distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at a
world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such
strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At
times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air:
it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of
the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.

Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence
of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand,
to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though
she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed