t wouldn't interest you," said Mrs. Fane in her tone of
gentle discouragement.

"I don't want to be inquisitive," said Michael resentfully.

"No, dear, I'm sure you don't," his mother softly agreed.

The holidays ran their pastoral course of sun and rain, of clouds and
winds, until the last week arrived with September in her most majestic
mood of flawless halcyon. These were days that more than any hitherto
enhanced for Michael the reverence he felt for the household of Cobble
Place. These were days when Mrs. Carthew stepped wisely along her
flowery enclosure, pondering the plums and peaches on the warm walls
that in a transcendency of mellow sunlight almost took on the texture of
living sunburnt flesh. These were days when Joan and May Carthew went
down the village street with great bunches of Michaelmas daisies, of
phloxes and Japanese anemones, or sat beneath the mulberry tree, sewing
in the bee-drowsed air.

At the foot of the hill beyond the stream was a straggling wind-frayed
apple-orchard, fresh pasturage for lambs in spring, and now in September
a jolly haunt for the young son of Mrs. Ross. Here one afternoon, when
Alan was away at Basingstead Major playing the last cricket match of the
year, Michael plunged down in the grass beside her.

They sat for a while in silence, and Mrs. Ross seemed to Michael to be
waiting for him to speak first, as if by her own attitude of mute
expectation she could lure him on to express himself more openly than by
direct question and shy answer. He felt the air pregnant with
confidences, and kept urging himself on to begin the statement and
revelation of his character, sure that whatever he desired to ask must
be asked now while he was perhaps for the last time liable to this grave
woman's influence, conscious of the security of goodness, envious of the
maternity of peace. This grey-eyed woman seemed to sit above him like a
proud eagle, careless of homage, never to be caught, never to be tamed,
a figure for worship and inspiration. Michael wondered why all the women
who awed him had grey eyes. Blue eyes fired his senses, striking sparks
and kindling answering flames from his own blue eyes. Brown eyes left
him indifferent. But grey eyes absorbed his very being, whether they
were lustrous and violet-shaded like his mother's and Stella's, or
whether, like Mrs. Ross's, they were soft as grey sea-water that in a
moment could change to the iron-bound rocks they were so near.

Still