As though that were an admirable achievement, or even of any
particular importance. And yet she seemed to think it was both of
these when, resting against him, within the circle of his arm, still
shy and silent under the breathless poignancy of an emotion which
ever seemed to sound within her depths unsuspected.

But when he said that she had made a new and completely different
man of him, she remembered his low-voiced when that change impended as
he held her by her wrists a moment, then dropped them. He had said,
half to himself: "You should have let me alone!"

Sometimes at noon she remembered this when they went out for
luncheon realizing they would never have been seated together in a
restaurant had she not satisfied her curiosity. She should have let
him alone; she knew that. She tried to wish that she had--tried to
regret everything, anything; and could not, even when within her the
faint sense of alarm awoke amid the softly unchangeable unreality of
these last six weeks of spring.

Was this then really love?--this drifting through alternating dreams
of shyness, tenderness, suspense, pierced at moments by tiny flashes
of fear, as lightning flickers, far buried in softly shrouded depths
of cloud?

She had long periods of silent and absorbed dreaming, conscious only
that she dreamed, but not of the dream itself.

She was aware, too, of a curious loneliness within her, and dimly
understood that it was the companion of a lifetime she was