course you'll bring him to tea, when he comes to
stay with you? That will be charming ... yes, charming. Now hurry, or
you'll miss her."

Guy had no words to tell Mrs. Grey of the devotion she had inspired; but
all the way down the Fairfield road he blessed her and hoped that
somehow the benediction would make itself manifest. Then, far away,
coming over the brow of a hill, he saw Pauline. It was one of those
hills with a suggestion of the sea behind them, so sharply are they cut
against the sky. This was one of those hills that in childhood had
thrilled him with promise of the faintly imaginable; and even now he
always approached such a hill with a dream and surmise of new beauty.
Yet more wonderful than any dream was the reality of Pauline coming
towards him over the glistening road. She was shy when he met her, and
the answers she gave to his eager questions were so softly spoken that
Guy was half afraid of having exacted too much from her yesterday. Did
she regret already the untroublous time before she knew him? Yet it was
better that she should walk beside him in still unbroken enchantment,
that the declaration of his love should not have damaged the wings
seeming always unfolded for flight from earth; so would he wish to keep
her always, that never this Psyche should be made a prisoner by him. The
elusive quality of Pauline which was shared in a slighter degree by her
sisters kept him eternally breathless, for she was immaterial as a cloud
that flushes for an instant far away from the sunset. And yet she was
made with too much of earth's simple beauty to be compared with clouds.
Her sisters had the ghostly serenity and remoteness that might more
appropriately be called elusive. Pauline gave more the effect of an
earthly thing that transcends by the perfection of its substance even
spirit; and rather was she seeming, though poised for airy regions,
still sweetly content with earth. She had not been more elusive than
eglantine overarching a deep lane at Midsummer, for he had pulled down
the spray, and it was the fear of a petal falling too soon from the
tremulous flowers that gave him this sense of awe as he walked beside
her.

Yet once again Guy found his comparisons poor enough when he looked at
Pauline, and he exclaimed, despairingly:

"There _are_ no words for you. I wanted to say to your mother what I
thought about you. Oh, she was so charming."

"She is a darling," said Pauline. "And so is Father."

The