Edith Lawrence grew up in a terrible hurry," he
began in a slow, teasing manner. "Just a day or two ago you were
youngsters racing around with flying pigtails, and now here you are--all
these poor young chaps--and all us poor old ones--fighting for dances
with you. What made you hurry so?" he laughed.

The coquette in most normal girls of twenty rose like a little imp up
through her dreaming of over the hills and far away. "Why, I don't
know," she said, demurely; "perhaps I was hurrying to catch up with
someone."

His older to younger person manner fell away, leaving the man delighting
in the girl, a delightfully daring girl it seemed she was, for all that
look of fine things he had felt in her just a moment before. He grew
newly puzzled about her, and interested in the puzzle. "Would you like
to have that someone stand still long enough to give you a good start?"
he asked, zestful for following.

But she could not go on with it. She was not used to saying daring
things to "older men." She was a little appalled at what she had
done--saying a thing like that to a man who was married; and yet just a
little triumphant in her own audacity, and the way she had been able to
make him feel she was something a long way removed from a little girl
with flying pigtails.

"I really have been grown up for quite a while," she said, suddenly
grave.

He did not try to bring her back to the other mood,--that astonishing
little flare of audacity; he was watching her changing face, like her
voice it was sweetly grave.

The music had begun again--this time a waltz. A light hand upon her arm,
he directed her back towards the dancing floor.

"I have this taken," she objected hesitatingly.

"This is an extra," he said.

She felt sure that it was not; she knew she ought to object, that it was
not right to be treating one of the boys of her own crowd that way. But
that consciousness of what she ought to be doing fell back--pale,
impotent--before the thing she wanted to do....

They were silent for a little time after; without commenting on doing
so, they returned to their place outside. "See?" she said presently,
"the moon has found another hill. That wasn't there when we were here
before."

"And beyond that are more hills," he said, "that we don't see even yet."

"I suppose," she laughed, "that it's not knowing where we would get
makes over the hills and far away--fun."

"Well, anything rather than standing still." He said it