to tease her and try to distract her, but he
respected her seriousness.

When they played together she was fair-minded, didn't whine if
she got hurt, and never claimed a girl's exemption from anything
unpleasant. She was calm, even on the day when she fell into the
mill-dam and he fished her out; as soon as she stopped choking
and coughing up muddy water, she wiped her face with her little
drenched petticoats, and sat shivering and saying over and over,
"Oh, Claude, Claude!" Incidents like that one now seemed to him
significant and fateful.

When Claude's strength began to return to him, it came
overwhelmingly. His blood seemed to grow strong while his body
was still weak, so that the in-rush of vitality shook him. The
desire to live again sang in his veins while his frame was
unsteady. Waves of youth swept over him and left him exhausted.
When Enid was with him these feelings were never so strong; her
actual presence restored his equilibrium--almost. This fact did
not perplex him; he fondly attributed it to something beautiful
in the girl's nature,--a quality so lovely and subtle that there
is no name for it.

During the first days of his recovery he did nothing but enjoy
the creeping stir of life. Respiration was a soft physical
pleasure. In the nights, so long he could not sleep them through,
it was delightful to lie upon a cloud that floated lazily down
the sky. In the depths of this lassitude the thought of Enid
would start up like a sweet, burning pain, and he would drift out
into the darkness upon sensations he could neither prevent nor
control. So long as he could plough, pitch hay, or break his back
in the wheatfield, he had been master; but now he was overtaken
by himself. Enid was meant for him and she had come for him; he
would never let her go. She should never know how much he longed
for her. She would be slow to feel even a little of what he was
feeling; he knew that. It would take a long while. But he would
be infinitely patient, infinitely tender of her. It should be he
who suffered, not she. Even in his dreams he never wakened her,
but loved her while she was still and unconscious like a statue.
He would shed love upon her until she warmed and changed without
knowing why.

Sometimes when Enid sat unsuspecting beside him, a quick blush
swept across his face and he felt guilty toward her, meek and
humble, as if he must beg her forgiveness for something. Often he
was glad when she went away and l