indeed, she
encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration
in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as
she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her
new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which
Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure
began to go to her head like wine....

When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while
Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his
love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious
yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on
occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be
detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely
disquieting. At last she said:

"Oughtn't we to be going home?"

"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest
road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was
summer."

"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't
know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this."

"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:

"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things
get settled a little--isn't there?"

She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they
walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the
tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to
drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in
the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun
fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky,
distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at a
world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such
strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At
times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air:
it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of
the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.

Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence
of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand,
to reassure himself that she was at least physically presen