ep, isn't it?"

"Mark!"

"Yes."

"Which star is yours? Mine is the white one over the top branch of the
big sycamore, from here."

"Mine is that twinkling red one over the summer house. Sylvia!"

"Yes."

"Catch!"

"Oh! I couldn't--what was it?"

"Nothing."

"No, but what WAS it?"

"Only my star. It's caught in your hair."

"Oh!"

"Listen!"

Silence, then, until her awed whisper:

"What?"

And his floating down, dying away:
"CAVE!"

What had stirred--some window opened? Cautiously he spied along the face
of the dim house. There was no light anywhere, nor any shifting blur of
white at her window below. All was dark, remote--still sweet with the
scent of something jolly. And then he saw what that something was. All
over the wall below his window white jessamine was in flower--stars, not
only in the sky. Perhaps the sky was really a field of white flowers;
and God walked there, and plucked the stars. . . .

The next morning there was a letter on his plate when he came down to
breakfast. He couldn't open it with Sylvia on one side of him, and old
Tingle on the other. Then with a sort of anger he did open it. He need
not have been afraid. It was written so that anyone might have read; it
told of a climb, of bad weather, said they were coming home. Was he
relieved, disturbed, pleased at their coming back, or only uneasily
ashamed? She had not got his second letter yet. He could feel old
Tingle looking round at him with those queer sharp twinkling eyes of
hers, and Sylvia regarding him quite frankly. And conscious that he was
growing red, he said to himself: 'I won't!' And did not. In three days
they would be at Oxford. Would they come on here at once? Old Tingle
was speaking. He heard Sylvia answer: "No, I don't like 'bopsies.'
They're so hard!" It was their old name for high cheekbones. Sylvia
certainly had none, her cheeks went softly up to her eyes.

"Do you, Mark?"

He said slowly:

"On some people."

"People who have them are strong-willed, aren't they?"

Was SHE--Anna--strong-willed? It came to him that he did not know at all
what she was.

When breakfast was over and he had got away to his old greenhouse, he had
a strange, unhappy time. He was a beast, he had not been thinking of her
half enough! He took the letter out, and frowned at it horribly. Why
could he not feel more? What was the matter with him? Why was he such a
brute--not to be thinking of her d