e had been still less true. Ah! but it was
all so mixed up. It felt all bleak, too, and wintry in him, as if he had
suddenly lost everybody's love. Then he was conscious of his tutor.

"Ah! friend Lennan--looking deeply into the past from the less romantic
present? Nice things, those old charts. The dolphins are extremely
jolly."

It was difficult to remember not to be ill-mannered then. Why did
Stormer jeer like that? He just managed to answer:

"Yes, sir; I wish we had some now."

"There are so many moons we wish for, Lennan, and they none of them come
tumbling down."

The voice was almost earnest, and the boy's resentment fled. He felt
sorry, but why he did not know.

"In the meantime," he heard his tutor say, "let us dress for dinner."

When he came down to the drawing-room, Anna in her moonlight-coloured
frock was sitting on the sofa talking to--Sylvia. He kept away from
them; they could neither of them want him. But it did seem odd to him,
who knew not too much concerning women, that she could be talking so
gaily, when only half an hour ago she had said: "Is it that girl?"

He sat next her at dinner. Again it was puzzling that she should be
laughing so serenely at Gordy's stories. Did the whispering in the
porch, then, mean nothing? And Sylvia would not look at him; he felt
sure that she turned her eyes away simply because she knew he was going
to look in her direction. And this roused in him a sore
feeling--everything that night seemed to rouse that feeling--of
injustice; he was cast out, and he could not tell why. He had not meant
to hurt either of them! Why should they both want to hurt him so? And
presently there came to him a feeling that he did not care: Let them
treat him as they liked! There were other things besides love! If they
did not want him--he did not want them! And he hugged this reckless,
unhappy, don't-care feeling to him with all the abandonment of youth.

But even birthdays come to an end. And moods and feelings that seem so
desperately real die in the unreality of sleep.

XVI

If to the boy that birthday was all bewildered disillusionment, to Anna
it was verily slow torture; SHE found no relief in thinking that there
were things in life other than love. But next morning brought
readjustment, a sense of yesterday's extravagance, a renewal of hope.
Impossible surely that in one short fortnight she had lost what she had
made so sure of! She had only to be re