We must go home," she whispered. "Oh, Guy, I feel frightened of this
evening."

"Pauline, my burning rose," he whispered.

And all the way back into the crimson sunset they talked still in
whispers, and of those rain-drenched ragged-robins there was not one
they carried home.

La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!
La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!
La belle Dame sans mercy hath thee in thrall!

The words did not cool Guy's pillow that night, but they led him by
strange ways into a fevered sleep.

SUMMER

JUNE

When Pauline reached the Rectory dinner had already begun in the mixture
of candle-light and rosy dusk that seemed there more than anything to
mark Summer's instant approach, and as with flushed cheeks she took her
place at table she was conscious of an atmosphere that was half
disapproval, half anxiety; or was it that she, disapproving of herself,
expected criticism? Positively there was an emotion of being on her
defense; she felt propitiatory and apologetic; and for the first time
she was sharply aware of herself and her family as two distinct facts.
It was to dispel this uneasy sense of potential division that she took
up her violin with a faintly exaggerated willingness, and that, instead
of dreaming of Guy in a corner of the room, she played all the evening
in the same spirit of wanting to please.

Her mother asked if she had enjoyed her walk, and Pauline had positively
to fight with herself before she could answer lightly enough that the
walk had been perfect. Why was her heart beating like this, and why did
her sisters regard her so gravely? It must be her fancy, and almost
defiantly she continued:

"There was no harm in my going out with Guy, was there? We've not been
together at all lately."

"Why should there be any particular harm this evening?" Monica inquired.

"Of course not, Monica," and again her heart was beating furiously. "I
only asked because I thought you all seemed angry with me for being a
little late for dinner."

"I don't know why we should suddenly be sensitive about punctuality in
this house," said Margaret.

Pauline had never thought her own white fastness offered such relief and
shelter as to-night; and yet, she assured herself, nobody had really
been criticizing her. It must have been entirely her fancy, that air of
reproach, those insinuations of cold surprise. People in this house did
not understand what it meant to be as muc