hen he had not much
regretted his baldness. He entered into a little question of their
comparative ages, which led him to the conclusion that Cynthia must now
be about twenty-five.

Almost at the same moment he saw her coming up the walk toward him from
far down the avenue. For a reason, or rather a motive, of his own he
pretended to himself that it was not she, but he knew instantly that it
was, and he put on his hat. He could see that she did not know him, and
it was a pretty thing to witness the recognition dawn on her. When it
had its full effect, he was aware of a flutter, a pause in her whole
figure before she came on toward him, and he hurried his steps for the
charm of her beautiful blushing face.

It was the spiritual effect of figure and face that he had carried in
his thought ever since he had arrived at that one-sided intimacy through
his study of her for the picture he had just seen. He had often had
to ask himself whether he had really perceived or only imagined the
character he had translated into it; but here, for the moment at least,
was what he had seen. He hurried forward and joyfully took the hand she
gave him. He thought he should speak of that at once, but it was not
possible, of course. There had to come first the unheeded questions
and answers about each other's health, and many other commonplaces.
He turned and walked home with her, and at the gate of the little ugly
house she asked him if he would not come in and take tea with them.

Her father talked with him while she got the tea, and when it was ready
her brother came in from his walk home out of Old Cambridge and helped
her put it on the table. He had grown much taller than Westover, and
he was very ecclesiastical in his manner; more so than he would be,
probably, if he ever became a bishop, Westover decided. Jombateeste, in
an interval of suspended work at the brick yard, was paying a visit to
his people in Canada, and Westover did not see him.

All the time while they sat at table and talked together Westover
realized more and more that for him, at least, the separation of the
last two years had put that space between them which alone made it
possible for them to approach each other on new ground. A kind of
horror, of repulsion, for her engagement to Jeff Durgin had ceased from
his sense of her; it was as if she had been unhappily married, and the
man, who had been unworthy and unkind, was like a ghost who could never
come to trouble