verlapping of something they both had in common,
which is the surest herald sometimes of friendship, sometimes of other
things.

Killigrew arrived with a copy of "Richard Feverel" under one arm and the
first edition of Fitzgerald's "Omar Khayyam" under the other. He exuded
life and enjoyment, and Ishmael wondered what indigestion, mental or
physical could have had him in its grip when he felt that the power of
ecstasy was slipping. Certainly he seemed to bubble with it now, though
it remained to be seen whether what chiefly evoked it were the
impersonal things of life or not. It was impossible to feel any shyness
with him, and even Ishmael soon was talking and feeling curiously
unscathed when Killigrew unabashedly referred to old times, painful and
otherwise. "It is only Joe ..." Ishmael reflected, which was the fatal
leniency that had pursued Killigrew through life.

Georgie left the two men to spend the evening together and went back to
Paradise Cottage, but before she fell asleep that night she heard a low
murmur of voices outside. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window.
It was a night of bright moonlight, and under the shadow of the
tamarisk hedge she could see Killigrew's darker figure, with its
unmistakably raking poise. Another shadow had just parted from it and
was coming to the door--the figure of Judith. She had been out when
Georgie entered--out for a walk, Mrs. Penticost had said. Georgie
skipped back to bed full of excitement. She had guessed before that Judy
cared about Killigrew, and now, judging by that parting, they were
engaged and everything was to be all right. How thrilling!... She smiled
and dimpled as she met Judy's eye next morning, inviting the
announcement.

The days went on and Judy did not make it. Only as the lovely spring
days, pale with windy sunlight or soft with fuming mists, slipped by,
Judith blossomed as the rose. But it was a fierce blossoming, a fiery
happiness, that Georgie could not understand. It was not thus that the
nice jolly Val had made her feel. She wondered and she felt a little
hurt that Judy should not confide in her, but as the days went on her
own affairs began to engross her, and she shrugged her sturdy
self-reliant shoulders and told herself that Judy must after all manage
her own affairs.

It was a wonderful spring, the sweetest time of the year because the
period of promise and not of fulfilment. This spring, in its wine-pale
clarity, its swift shadows, i