posing him
capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and laboured
growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched
bird.

He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic
brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock, with
apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house, he
withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden, through
the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. He could not bear to
remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried hard.

Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back by the same
path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. The
boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from
behind, he could not see if the May party had all gone till he had
passed through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.
Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.

She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just when it began,
Clym," she said.

"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them, of course?"

"No, I did not."

"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."

"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were there. One is
there now."

Yeobright strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond the
paling, and near the black form of the Maypole he discerned a shadowy
figure, sauntering idly up and down. "Who is it?" he said.

"Mr. Venn," said Thomasin.

"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie. He has been very
kind to you first and last."

"I will now," she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through the
wicket to where Venn stood under the Maypole.

"It is Mr. Venn, I think?" she inquired.

Venn started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--and
said, "Yes."

"Will you come in?"

"I am afraid that I--"

"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best of the
girls for your partners. Is it that you won't come in because you wish
to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?"

"Well, that's partly it," said Mr. Venn, with ostentatious sentiment.
"But the main reason why I am biding here like this is that I want to
wait till the moon rises."

"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?"

"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens."

Thomasin was speechless with surprise. That a man who had t