arations,
shouldn't I?" Keith inquired in a dry voice. "If you'd come here and
found the place cold and nothing to eat you'd have made a bit of a
shindy."

A reserve had fallen between them. Jenny knew she had been unwise. It
pressed down upon her heart the feeling that he was somehow still a
stranger to her. And all the time they had been apart he had not seemed
a stranger, but one to whom her most fleeting and intimate thoughts
might freely have been given. That had been the wonderful thought to
her--that they had met so seldom and understood each other so well. She
had made a thousand speeches to him in her dreams. Together, in these
same dreams, they had seen and done innumerable things together, always
in perfect confidence, in perfect understanding. Yet now, when she saw
him afresh, all was different. Keith was different. He was browner,
thinner, less warm in manner; and more familiar, too, as though he were
sure of her. His clothes were different, and his carriage. He was not
the same man. It was still Keith, still the man Jenny loved; but as
though he were also somebody else whom she was meeting for the first
time. Her love, the love intensified by long broodings, was as strong;
but he was a stranger. All that intimacy which seemed to have been
established between them once and for ever was broken by the new contact
in unfamiliar surroundings. She was shy, uncertain, hesitating; and in
her shyness she had blundered. She had been unwise, and he was offended
when she could least afford to have him so offended. It took much
resolution upon Jenny's part to essay the recovery of lost ground. But
the tension was the worse for this mistake, and she suffered the more
because of her anxious emotions.

"Oh, well," she said at last, as calmly as she could. "I daresay we
should have managed. I mightn't have come. But I've come, and you had
all these beautiful things ready; and...." Her courage to be severe
abruptly failed; and lamely she concluded: "And it's simply like
fairyland.... I'm ever so happy."

Keith grinned again, showing perfect white teeth. For a moment he
looked, Jenny thought, quite eager. Or was that only her fancy because
she so desired to see it? She shook her head; and that drew Keith's eye.

"More trifle?" he suggested, with an arch glance. Jenny noticed he wore
a gold ring upon the little finger of his right hand. It gleamed in the
faint glow of the cabin. So, also, did the fascinating golden hairs