er light-brown hair, and around them like a Circean perfume drowning
the actual world hung the odorous thickets of hawthorn.

The month glided along until the time of ragged-robins came round again,
and as if these flowers were positively of ill omen to Guy and Pauline,
Mrs. Grey suddenly took it into her head again that they were seeing too
much of each other.

"I said you could see Pauline every day," she told Guy. "But I did not
say all day."

"But I shall be going away soon," he said; "and it seems a pity to lose
any of this lovely month."

"I'm sure I'm right ... and I did not know you had really decided to go
away.... I'm sure, yes, I'm positive I'm right.... Why don't you be more
like Margaret and Richard?... They aren't together all day long ... no,
not all day."

"But Pauline is so different from Margaret," Guy argued.

"Yes, I know ... that's the reason ... she is too impulsive.... Yes,
it's much better not to be together all the time.... I'm glad you've
settled to go to London ... then perhaps you can be married next
year...."

A rule came into force again, and Guy began to feel the old exasperation
against the curb upon youth's leisure. Rather unjustly he blamed
Margaret, because he felt that the spectacle of her sedate affection
made his for Pauline appear too wild, and Pauline herself beside
Margaret seem completely distraught with love.

It pleased Guy rather, and yet in a way it rather annoyed him, that
Michael Fane should choose this moment to announce his intention of
spending some time at Plashers Mead. Perhaps a little of the doubt was
visible in his welcome, because Michael asked rather anxiously if he
were intruding upon the May idyll; Guy laughed off the slight
awkwardness and asked why Michael had not yet managed to get married.
They talked about the evils of procrastination, but Guy could not at all
see that Michael had much to complain of in a postponement of merely two
months. His friend, however, was evidently rather upset, and he could
not resist expatiating a little on his own grief with what Guy thought
was the petulance of the too fortunate man. The warm May nights lulled
them both, and they used to pass pleasant evenings leaning over the
stream while the bats and fern-owls flew across the face of the
decrescent moon; yet for Guy all the beauty of the season was more than
ever endowed with intolerable fugacity.

Pauline with Michael's arrival began to be moody again; would take