tremulous sheen to her.
Wildly she ran down the steep bank and flung herself into the water.

"Where am I? Guy, where am I?"

"Well, at present you're lying on the grass, but where you've been or
where I've been this last five minutes.... Pauline, are you yourself
again?"

"Guy, my dearest, my dearest, I don't know why...." She burst into
tears. "My dearest, how wet you are," she sobbed, stroking his drenched
sleeve.

"Well, naturally," he said, with a short laugh. "Look here, it was all
my fault for bringing you out, so don't get into a state of mind about
yourself, but you can't go back in the canoe. My nerves are still too
shaky. I can lift you over the wall behind the mill, and we must go back
to the Rectory across the street. Come, my Pauline, you're wet, you
know. Oh, my own, my sweet, if I could only uncount the hours."

Pauline would never have reached home but for Guy's determination. It
was he who guided her past the dark entries, past the crafty windows of
Rectory Lane, past the menacing belfry, past the trees of the Rectory
drive. By the front door he asked her if she dared go up-stairs alone.

"I will wait on the lawn until I see your candle alight," he promised.

She kissed him tragically and crept in. Her room was undisturbed, but in
the looking-glass she saw a dripping ghost, and when she held her candle
to the window another ghost vanished slowly into the high gray wall. A
cock crowed in the distance, and through the leaves of the wistaria
there ran a flutter of waking sparrows.

JULY

When Guy looked back next morning at what had happened on the river, he
felt that the only thing to do was to leave Pauline for a while and give
her time and opportunity to recover from the shock. He wondered if it
would be wiser merely to write a note to announce his intention or if
she had now reached a point at which even a letter would be a disastrous
aggravation of her state of mind. He felt that he could not bear any
scene that might approximate to that horrible scene last night, and yet
to go away abruptly in such circumstances seemed too callous. Supposing
that he went across to the Rectory and that Pauline should have another
seizure of hatred for him (there was no other word that could express
what her attitude had been), how could their engagement possibly go on?
Mrs. Grey would be appalled by the emotional ravages it had made Pauline
endure; she would not be justified, whatever Pauline's poi