t leaped to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction
of his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze
coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a
dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He
touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could
destroy this moment.

"Pauline, Pauline!"

He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine, and, folding her close,
he kissed her mouth. When he woke he was home; and for hours he sat
entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he
feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss.

The rest of that February went by with lengthening eyes that died on the
dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy
corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to
behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the
daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven
by the wooing of the windy March sun.

The gray-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often
bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring,
had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth.

Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented,
and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory
and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline
should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for
walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a
territory large enough for their love.

These first encounters were endowed with perhaps not much more than the
excitement of what were in a way superficial observations, since neither
of them was yet attempting to sound any deeps in the other's character.
Guy was engaged with driving a wedge into that past of the Rectory whose
least events he now envied, and he was never tired of the talks about
Pauline's childhood, so much of a fairy-tale she still seemed and fit
for endless repetition. And if Guy was never tired of being told, her
family was never tired of telling. Never, he thought, was lover so
fortunate in an audience as he in the willingness with which he was
accorded a confirmation of all his praises. Sometimes, indeed, he had to
look reproachfully at Monica or Margaret when Pauline seemed hurt at
being checked for some piece of dem