she said; "he only came to bring back my
valedictory. You know he wouldn't think of me. He'll marry somebody
like Maud Hemingway." Maud Hemingway was the daughter of the
leading physician in Rowe, and regarded with a mixture of spite and
admiration by daughters of the factory operatives. Maud Hemingway
was attending college, and rode a saddle-horse when home on her
vacations. She had been to Europe.

But that evening in the moonlight Ellen began thinking again of
Robert Lloyd. His face came before her as plainly as Granville
Joy's. She had arrived at that stage when life began to be as a
picture-gallery of love. Through this and that face the goddess
might look, and the look was what she sought; as yet, the man was a
minor quantity.

All at once it seemed to Ellen, looking at her mental picture of
young Lloyd, that she could see love in his face yet more plainly,
more according to her conception of it, than in the other. She began
to build an air-castle which had no reference whatever to Robert's
position, and to his being the nephew of the richest factory-owner
in Rowe, and so far as that went he had not a whit the advantage of
Granville Joy in her eyes. But Robert's face wore to her more of the
guise of that for which the night and the moonlight, and her youth,
had made her long. So she began innocently to imagine a meeting with
him at a picnic which would be held some time at Liberty Park. She
imagined their walking side by side, through a lovely dapple of
moonlight like this, and saying things to each other. Then all at
once the man of her dreams touched her hand in a dream, and a
faintness swept over her. Then suddenly, gathering shape out of the
indetermination of the shadows and the moonlight, came a man into
the yard, and Ellen thought with awe and delight that it was he; but
instead Granville Joy stood before her, lifting his hat above his
soft shock of hair.

"Hullo!" he said.

"Good-evening," responded Ellen, and Granville Joy felt abashed. He
lay awake half the night reflecting that he should have greeted her
with a "Good-evening" instead of "Hullo," as he had been used to do
in their school-days; that she was now a young lady, and that Mr.
Lloyd had accosted her differently. Ellen rose with a feeling of
disappointment that Granville was himself, which is the hardest
greeting possible for a guest, involving the most subtle reproach in
the world--the reproach for a man's own individuality.

"Oh, don