he sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive
of its being otherwise. But now, as he stood outside the church, and saw
Mattie spinning down the floor with Denis Eady, a throng of disregarded
hints and menaces wove their cloud about his brain....

II

As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back behind the
projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the grotesquely
muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a
face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers, being afoot, were
the first to climb the slope to the main street, while the country
neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the
shed.

"Ain't you riding, Mattie?" a woman's voice called back from the throng
about the shed, and Ethan's heart gave a jump. From where he stood he
could not see the persons coming out of the hall till they had advanced
a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the storm-door; but through its
cracks he heard a clear voice answer: "Mercy no! Not on such a night."

She was there, then, close to him, only a thin board between. In another
moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed
to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in
daylight. A wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the
wall, and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known
to her. It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from
the first, she, the quicker, finer, more expressive, instead of crushing
him by the contrast, had given him something of her own ease and
freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days,
when he had tried to "jolly" the Worcester girls at a picnic.

He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of
him. She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking
uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself.
Then a man's figure approached, coming so close to her that under their
formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline.

"Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I
wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as
that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look a here, ain't it
lucky I got the old man's cutter down there waiting for us?"

Frome heard the girl's voice, gaily incredulous: "What on earth's your
father's cutter doin' down