rnoon is ruined."

When they reached the confines of Plashers Mead he exclaimed in deeper
despair:

"Pauline! I must kiss you; and, look, actually the churchyard now is
crammed with people, all hovering about over the graves like ghouls. Why
does everybody want to come out this afternoon?"

They landed in the orchard behind the house, and Pauline was getting
ready to help Guy push the canoe across to the mill-stream, when he
vowed she must come and kiss him good night indoors.

"Of course I will; though I mustn't stay more than a minute, because I
promised Mother to be back by seven."

"I don't deserve you," said Guy, standing still and looking down at her.
"I've done nothing but grumble all the afternoon, and you've been an
angel. Ah, but it's only because I long to kiss you."

"I long to kiss you," she murmured.

"Do you? Do you?" he whispered. "Oh, with those ghouls in the churchyard
I can't even take your hand."

They crossed the bridge from the orchard and came round to the front of
the house into full sunlight, and thence out of the dazzle into Guy's
hall that was filled with water melodies and the green light of their
own pastoral world. Close they kissed, close and closer in the coolness
and stillness.

"Pauline! I shall go mad for love of you."

"I love you. I love you," she sighed, nestling to his arms' inclosure.

"Pauline!"

"Guy!"

Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.

Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she
had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the
library.

"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The
evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."

She could not disappoint him, and they went up-stairs and into his green
room that smelt of tobacco smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the
window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth
time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet
her that September night.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed, suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled
with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil:

The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land.
Michael Fane. _June 24_.

"That's to-day! Then Michael must be here. What an extraordinary thing!"

Guy looked round the room for any sign of his friend; but there was
nothing except the Shakespearian record of his prese