hat she was linking
her father and his father in past events; but still she did not voice
her thoughts, and whatever joys or miseries of that bygone time were
being recalled were still wrapped up in her reserve: nor did Michael
feel justified in trying to persuade her to unloose them, even here in
this majestic enclosure that would have engulfed them all as soon as
they were free.

"You're not cold?" he tenderly demanded.

Surely upon his arm she had shivered.

"No, but I think we'll go back to the ballroom," she sighed.

Michael felt awed when their feet grated again in movement over the
gravel. Behind them in the quadrangle there were ghosts, and the noise
of walking here seemed sacrilegious upon this moonless and heavy summer
night. Presently, however, two couples came laughing into the lamplight
at the corner. The sense of decorous creeds outraged by his mother's
behavior of long ago vanished in the relief that present youth gave with
its laughing company and fashionable frocks. Beside such heedlessness it
were vain to conjure too remorsefully the past. After all, Peckwater was
a place in which young men should crack whips and shout to one another
across window-boxes; here there should be no tombs. Michael and his
mother went on their way to the hall, and soon the music of the waltzing
filled magically the lamplit entries of the great college, luring them
to come back with light hearts, so importunate was the gaiety.

Michael rather reproached himself afterward for not trying to take
advantage of his mother's inclination to yield him a more extensive
confidence. He was sure Stella would not have allowed the opportunity to
slip by so in a craven embarrassment; or was it rather a fine
sensitiveness, an imaginative desire to let the whole of that history
lie buried in whatever poor shroud romance could lend it? As he was
thinking of Stella, herself came toward him over the shining floor of
the ballroom emptied for the interval between two dances. How delicately
flushed she was and how her gray eyes were lustered with joy of the
evening, or perhaps with fortunate tidings. Michael was struck by the
direct way in which she was coming toward him without bothering through
self-consciousness to seem to find him unexpectedly.

"Come for a walk with me in the moonlight," she said, taking his arm.

"There's no moon yet, but I'll take you for a walk."

The clock was striking two, as they reached Tom quad, and the
decres