ere she sat to look out over the
sad northern sea, lit with the fishing sail they had seen before, and
the surge washed into the rocky coves far beneath them, he threw himself
at her feet, and made her alone in the company that came and went and
tried this view and that from the different points where the picnic
hostess insisted they should enjoy it. She left the young couple to
themselves, and Mrs. Pasmer seemed to have forgotten that she had bidden
Alice to be a little more with her.

Alice had forgotten it too. She sat listening to Mavering's talk with a
certain fascination, but not so much apparently because the meaning of
the words pleased her as the sound of his voice, the motion of his lips
in speaking, charmed her. At first he was serious, and even melancholy,
as if he were afraid he had offended her; but apparently he soon
believed that he had been forgiven, and began to burlesque his own mood,
but still with a deference and a watchful observance of her changes of
feeling which was delicately flattering in its way. Now and then when
she answered something it was not always to the purpose; he accused her
of not hearing what he said, but she would have it that she did, and
then he tried to test her by proofs and questions. It did not matter
for anything that was spoken or done; speech and action of whatever sort
were mere masks of their young joy in each other, so that when he said,
after he had quoted some lines befitting the scene they looked out on;
"Now was that from Tennyson or from Tupper?" and she answered, "Neither;
it was from Shakespeare," they joined, in the same happy laugh, and they
laughed now and then without saying anything. Neither this nor that made
them more glad or less; they were in a trance, vulnerable to nothing but
the summons which must come to leave their dream behind, and issue into
the waking world.

In hope or in experience such a moment has come to all, and it is so
pretty to those who recognise it from the outside that no one has the
heart to hurry it away while it can be helped. The affair between Alice
and Mavering had evidently her mother's sanction, and all the rest were
eager to help it on. When the party had started to return, they called
to them, and let them come behind together. At the carriages they had
what Miss Anderson called a new deal, and Alice and Mavering found
themselves together in the rear seat of the last.

The fog began to come in from the sea, and followed