se there was never any blotting-paper in this desk that
was littered with childish things. Then Pauline went to the window; but
a gusty wind of late Summer was rustling the leaves and she could not
stay dreaming on the night as in May she had dreamed. There was
something faintly disquieting about this hollow wind which was like an
envoy threatening the trees with the furious Winter to come, and Pauline
shivered.

"Summer will soon be gone," she whispered, "but nowadays it doesn't
matter, because all days will be happy."

On this thought she fell asleep, and woke to a sunny morning, though the
sky was a turbid blue across which swollen clouds were steadily moving.
She lay watchful, wondering if this quiet time of six o'clock would hold
the best of Guy's birthday and if by eight o'clock the sky would not be
quite gray. It was a pity she and Guy had not arranged to meet early, so
that before the day was spoiled they should have possessed themselves of
its prime. Pauline could no longer stay in bed with this sunlight, the
lucid shadows of which, caught from the wistaria leaves, were flickering
all about the room. She must go to the window and salute his birthday.
Suddenly she recalled something Guy had once said of how he pictured her
always moving round her room in the morning like a small white cloud.
Blushful at the intimacy of the thought, she looked at herself in the
glass.

"You're his! You're his!" she whispered to her image. "Are you a white
goose, as Margaret said you were? Or are you the least bit like a
cloud?"

Guy came and knelt by her in church that morning, and she took his
action as the sign he offered to the world of holding her now openly. In
the great church they were kneeling; rose-fired both of them by the
crimson gowns of the high saints along the clerestory; and then Guy
slipped upon her finger the new ring he had bought for their engagement,
a pink topaz set in the old fashion, which burned there like the heart
of the rosy fire in which they knelt suffused.

Breakfast was to be in the garden, as all Rectory birthdays were except
Monica's, which fell in January; and since the day had ripened to a kind
of sweet sultriness as of a pear that has hung too long upon a wall, it
was grateful to sit in the shade of the weeping-willow by the side of
the lily-pond. To each floating cup, tawny or damasked, white or deepest
cramoisy, the Rector called their attention. Nymphaeas they were to him,
fountain di