s I could of the highroad."

"Shall I come with you?" asked Guy, but in so doubtful a voice that
Margaret laughingly declared she was sure he was in a state of being
offended with the Rectory.

"Oh, Margaret, don't be absurd. Offended?"

"Over the curtains?" she asked.

"Why, if it wouldn't betray a gross insensibility to your opinion, I
should tell you I thought no more about what you said. Besides, we've
had reconciling Christmas since then."

"Ah, but you see, Pauline is always impressing on Monica and me our
cruelty to you, and by this time Mother has been talked into believing
in our hard and impenitent hearts."

"Pauline is...." Guy broke off and saw another squirrel. He could not
trust himself to speak of Pauline, for in this stillness of snow he felt
that the lightest remark would reveal his love; and there was in nature
this morning a sort of suspense that seemed to rebuke unuttered secrets.

"Well, as you're walking with me to Fairfield--or nearly to
Fairfield--your neglect of us shall be forgiven," Margaret promised.
"Here we are out of the warm trees already. I'm glad I came this way,
though I think it was rather foolish. Look how deep the snow seems on
that field we've got to cross."

"It isn't really," said Guy, vaulting over the fence that ran round the
confines of the Abbey wood.

"Ah, now you've spoiled it," she exclaimed. But Margaret did not pause a
moment to regret the ruffling of that sheeted expanse, and they walked
on silently, watching the toes of their boots juggle with the snow.

"It generally is a pity," said Guy, after a while.

"What?"

"Impressing one's existence on so lovely and inviolate a thing as this."
He indicated the untrodden field in front of them.

"But look behind you," said Margaret. "Don't you think our footprints
look very interesting?"

"Interesting, perhaps," Guy admitted. "Yet footprints in snow never seem
to be going anywhere."

"Now I know quite well what you're doing," Margaret protested. "You're
making that poor little wabbly track of ours try to bear all sorts of
mysterious and symbolic intensities of meaning. Just because you're
feeling annoyed with a sonnet, footprints in the snow mustn't lead
anywhere. Why, Guy, if I told you what sentimental import my 'cello
sometimes gives to a simple walk before lunch.... I mean, of course,
when I've been playing badly."

She sighed, and Guy wondered if the violoncello had been used with as
little reference a