e enjoying it!" she murmured. "What a pity it was never done
before! And who will keep it up when you're gone?"

"You," he answered, meeting her eyes again; and as she coloured a little
under his look he went on quickly: "Will you come over and look at the
coasting? The time is almost up. One more slide and they'll be packing
off to supper."

She nodded "yes," and they walked in silence over the white lawn,
criss-crossed with tramplings of happy feet, to the ridge from which the
coasters started on their run. Amherst's object in turning the talk had
been to gain a moment's respite. He could not bear to waste his perfect
hour in futile explanations: he wanted to keep it undisturbed by any
thought of the future. And the same feeling seemed to possess his
companion, for she did not speak again till they reached the knoll where
the boys were gathered.

A sled packed with them hung on the brink: with a last shout it was off,
dipping down the incline with the long curved flight of a swallow,
flashing across the wide meadow at the base of the hill, and tossed
upward again by its own impetus, till it vanished in the dark rim of
wood on the opposite height. The lads waiting on the knoll sang out for
joy, and Bessy clapped her hands and joined with them.

"What fun! I wish I'd brought Cicely! I've not coasted for years," she
laughed out, as the second detachment of boys heaped themselves on
another sled and shot down. Amherst looked at her with a smile. He saw
that every other feeling had vanished in the exhilaration of watching
the flight of the sleds. She had forgotten why she had come--forgotten
her distress at his dismissal--forgotten everything but the spell of the
long white slope, and the tingle of cold in her veins.

"Shall we go down? Should you like it?" he asked, feeling no resentment
under the heightened glow of his pulses.

"Oh, do take me--I shall love it!" Her eyes shone like a child's--she
might have been a lovelier embodiment of the shouting boyhood about
them.

The first band of coasters, sled at heels, had by this time already
covered a third of the homeward stretch; but Amherst was too impatient
to wait. Plunging down to the meadow he caught up the sled-rope, and
raced back with the pack of rejoicing youth in his wake. The sharp climb
up the hill seemed to fill his lungs with flame: his whole body burned
with a strange intensity of life. As he reached the top, a distant bell
rang across the fields from