developed lines
of her figure emphasised Brenda's fragility. And yet Anne's eyes, her
whole pose, expressed a spirituality that Brenda lacked. Anne, with her
amazing changes of mood, her rapid response to emotion, gave expression to
some spirit not less feminine than Brenda's, but infinitely deeper. Behind
the moving shadows and sunlight of her impulses there lay always some
reminder of a constant orientation. She might trifle brilliantly with the
surface of life, but her soul was more steadfast than a star. Brenda might
love passionately, but her love would be relatively personal, selfish.
When Anne gave herself, she would love like a mother, with her whole
being.

I came out of my day-dream to find that she was speaking of me.

"Mr. Melhuish is half asleep," she was saying. "And I haven't got his room
ready after all this time."

"He didn't get much sleep last night," Brenda replied. "We none of us did
for that matter. We were wandering round the Park and just missing each
other like the people in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_."

"Come and help me to get that room ready," Anne said. "Father and mother
may be home any minute. They ought to have been back before."

Brenda was on her feet in a moment. She appeared glad to have some excuse
for action. She was, no doubt, nervous and excited as to the probable
result of her lover's mission to the Hall, and wanted to be alone with
Anne in order that they might speculate upon those probabilities which
Banks's return would presently transform into certainties.

Anne turned to me before they left the room and indicated three shelves of
books half hidden behind the settle. "You might find something to read
there, unless you'd sooner have a nap," she said. "We shan't be having
supper until eight."

I preferred, however, to go out and make my own estimate of probabilities
in the serenity of the August evening. My mind was too full to read. I
wanted to examine my own ideas just then, not those of some other man or
woman.

"I'm going for a walk," I said to Anne. "I want to think." And I looked at
her with a greater boldness than I had dared hitherto. I claimed a further
recognition of that understanding she had, as I believed, so recently
admitted.

"To think out that play?" she returned lightly, but her expression did not
accord with her tone. She had paused at the door, and as she looked back
at me, there was a suggestion of sadness in her face, of regret, or it
might eve