fly away."

"I remember your looking for them when you were tiny," Monica agreed.
"I can see you now kneeling down, and the mud on your knees, and your
eyes screwed up when you told me about your discovery."

They talked for a while of childish days, each capping the other's
evocation of those hours that now in retrospect appeared like the gay
pictures of an old book long ago lost, and found again on an idle
afternoon. They talked, too, of Margaret and whether she would marry
Richard; and presently, without the obvious transition that would have
made her silent, Pauline found that they were discussing Guy and
herself.

"I notice he doesn't come to church now so much as he did," said Monica.

Pauline was startled by an abrupt statement of something which among all
the other worries she had never defined to herself, but which, now that
Monica revealed its shape, she knew had occupied a dark corner at the
back of her mind more threatening than any of the rest. Of course she
began at once to make excuses for Guy, but her sister, who brought to
religion the same scrupulous temperament she gave to her music, would
not admit their validity.

"Don't you ever ask him why he hasn't been?" she persisted.

"Oh, of course not. Why, I couldn't, Monica! I should never feel.... Oh
no, Monica, it would really be impossible for me to talk to Guy about
his faith."

"His faith seems rather to have frozen lately," said Monica.

"He's been upset and disappointed."

"All the more reason for going to church," Monica urged.

"Yes, for you, darling, or for me; but Guy may be different."

"There's no room for moods in one's religious duties. The artistic
temperament is not provided for."

That serene and nunlike conviction of tone made Pauline feel a little
rebellious, and yet in its corroboration of her own uneasiness she could
not laugh it aside.

"Well, even if there's no excuse for him and even supposing it made me
dreadfully anxious," she affirmed, "I still wouldn't say a word to him."

"Does he know you go to Confession?"

Pauline blushed. Monica was like a Roman Catholic in the matter-of-fact
way in which she alluded to something that for Pauline pierced such
sanctities as could scarcely even be mentioned by herself to her own
soul.

"Monica, you don't really think that I ought to speak of that," she
stammered. Not even to her sister could she bring herself to utter the
sacramental word.

"I certainly think you shoul