he kiss. Any man would kiss
a girl when he saw her home if he had a chance, of course. But she was
vaguely furious with him because he was the cause of such a
disorganization of all her life plans. She felt cheated, though she
did not realize what she was cheated of, as she sat there looking out
of her little window towards the north.

Through the remainder of the evening and all the next day her mood
remained thus--indrawn and sombre. The people going on the promenade
passed by her like marionettes, and she like another marionette
responded, but there was no feeling in it at all. She might equally
well have seen the whole lot of them, herself included, jerked by wires
from a sardonic heaven that had no purpose, no plan--only such figures
of thought were not within her scope; still the feeling was there,
corroding her faith in life.

At last Saturday night came. But the week of long working hours during
which she had been constantly in the sea air and yet protected from
wind and rain, had left her filled with vitality, despite her
bitterness of mind. The night was not dark, because of a growing moon
and pale stars peppering the sky, and as she walked along the light
road with no care for her footsteps she found a vent for that unusual
vitality in a certain habit of her girlhood which she had almost
entirely dropped during the past year or two. Often enough before
that, she had walked about the Thorhaven streets imagining herself in
all sorts of impossible situations, though always happy, beloved and
rich. But she had since given it up, as she had put away her dolls a
year or two earlier; and she now felt a secret shame in abandoning
herself to it again--as if she had at fourteen taken to playing with
dolls once more.

So she let herself imagine Godfrey walking by her side with his arm
through hers--kissing her at the gate. After all, nobody would ever
know. It hurt nobody; it was all she would ever get. Then weakened by
her dreaming she actually did see Godfrey come forth from a clump of
dark elders and had not the power to walk straight on as she would have
done half an hour earlier. Instead, she stood still and looked at
him--disturbed, unhappy, yet with the dull bitterness suddenly gone.

He was close to her before he spoke; then he said hurriedly: "I only
wanted to apologize for the other night. I hope you were not
offended?" But he knew quite well she was not: it was the urge of that
curiosity s