tion. Trains came, crowded with
excursionists returning to Manchester, Birmingham, and London.

"We might be going there--folk easily might think we're going that far,"
said Paul.

They got back rather late. Miriam, walking home with Geoffrey, watched
the moon rise big and red and misty. She felt something was fulfilled in
her.

She had an elder sister, Agatha, who was a school-teacher. Between the
two girls was a feud. Miriam considered Agatha worldly. And she wanted
herself to be a school-teacher.

One Saturday afternoon Agatha and Miriam were upstairs dressing. Their
bedroom was over the stable. It was a low room, not very large, and
bare. Miriam had nailed on the wall a reproduction of Veronese's "St.
Catherine". She loved the woman who sat in the window, dreaming. Her
own windows were too small to sit in. But the front one was dripped over
with honeysuckle and virginia creeper, and looked upon the tree-tops of
the oak-wood across the yard, while the little back window, no bigger
than a handkerchief, was a loophole to the east, to the dawn beating up
against the beloved round hills.

The two sisters did not talk much to each other. Agatha, who was fair
and small and determined, had rebelled against the home atmosphere,
against the doctrine of "the other cheek". She was out in the world now,
in a fair way to be independent. And she insisted on worldly values,
on appearance, on manners, on position, which Miriam would fain have
ignored.

Both girls liked to be upstairs, out of the way, when Paul came. They
preferred to come running down, open the stair-foot door, and see him
watching, expectant of them. Miriam stood painfully pulling over her
head a rosary he had given her. It caught in the fine mesh of her hair.
But at last she had it on, and the red-brown wooden beads looked well
against her cool brown neck. She was a well-developed girl, and very
handsome. But in the little looking-glass nailed against the whitewashed
wall she could only see a fragment of herself at a time. Agatha had
bought a little mirror of her own, which she propped up to suit herself.
Miriam was near the window. Suddenly she heard the well-known click of
the chain, and she saw Paul fling open the gate, push his bicycle into
the yard. She saw him look at the house, and she shrank away. He walked
in a nonchalant fashion, and his bicycle went with him as if it were a
live thing.

"Paul's come!" she exclaimed.

"Aren't you glad?" said A