er come to proposing to any
girl?"

"God Almighty!" cried the man, and did not apologize for the
blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons
of innocence widened inimitably before his horrified eyes. And then,
following some line of association which escaped Sylvia, "I'm not fit
to _look_ at Judith!" he cried. The idea seemed to burst upon him like
a thunder-clap.

Sylvia patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. "That's the proper
thing for a lover to think!" she said with cheerful, commonplace
inanity. She did not notice that he shrank from her hand, because she
now sprang up, crying, "But where's Judy? Where _is_ Judy?"

He nodded towards the house. "She sent me out to get you. She's in her
room--she wants to tell you--but when I saw you, I couldn't keep it
to myself." His exaltation swept back like a wave, from the crest of
which he murmured palely, "Judith! Judith!" and Sylvia laughed at him,
with the tears of sympathy in her eyes, and leaving him there on the
bench staring before him at the living fire of the flame-colored
flowers, she ran with all her speed into the house.

Morrison, lounging in a chair with a book, looked up, startled at her
whirlwind entrance. "What's up?" he inquired.

At the sound of his voice, she checked herself and pirouetted with a
thistle-down lightness to face him. Her face, always like a clear,
transparent vase lighted from within, now gave out, deeply moved as
she was, an almost visible brightness. "Judith!" she cried, her voice
ringing like a silver trumpet, "Judith and Arnold!" She was poised
like a butterfly, and as she spoke she burst into flight again, and
was gone.

She had not been near him, but the man had the distinct impression
that she had thrown herself on his neck and kissed him violently, in
a transport of delight. In the silent room, still fragrant, still
echoing with her passage, he closed his book, and later his eyes, and
sat with the expression of a connoisseur savoring an exquisite, a
perfect impression....

* * * * *

Tea that afternoon was that strangest of phenomena, a formal ceremony
of civilized life performed in the abashing and disconcerting presence
of naked emotion. Arnold and Judith sat on opposite sides of the
pergola, Judith shining and radiant as the dawn, her usually firmly
set lips soft and tremulous; Arnold rather pale, impatient, oblivious
to what was going on around him, his spirit p