Berkeley dropped out of the talk, folded some soft brilliant net over
her light dress, and went down the walk leading to the shore, and he did
not see her again that night.

After that he spent much of his time below stairs. Much alone; there
were walks and rides in which he could take no part. Despite of George's
prediction, he had peace and quiet, and gathered strength hourly.
Whatever of graciousness he _had_ seen or fancied in Miss Berkeley's
manner in that first unexpected meeting had all vanished. A subtile,
unconquerable something shut her out from all friendliness of speech or
action. She went about the house in her slow, abstracted way, or in her
other mood, with sudden darting motions like a swallow, or dreamed all
day beside the summer sea, coming back browner and with mistier looks in
her gray eyes, but always alone and unapproachable. So that in half a
dozen days he had not received as many voluntary sentences from her.

But one morning the clouds had gathered black and heavy. The sea fogs
had pitched their tents to landward, and their misty battalions were
driving gray across the landscape. Dim reaches of blank water--lay
beyond, weltering with an uneasy, rocking motion against the low, dark
sky. White, ghostly sea birds wheeled low, a fretful wind grieved about
the house, and a New England northeast storm was in progress. She was
standing at the window, looking out with eyes farther away than ever
over the haze-draped sea. Some fine, heavy material, the same indistinct
hue as the day outside, fell about her in large, sweeping folds. A
breath of sudden, penetrating perfume struck across his senses as he
approached her. 'And gray heliotrope!' he said; but the heliotrope
vanished as she turned and displayed the blaze of carnations at her
throat, and the gleam of crimson silk under the jaunty zouave.

'Lois Pearl Berkeley,' he read from the golden thimble he had nearly
crushed under foot. He half wondered if she would know what it was. He
never saw her do anything. She was never 'engaged,' nor in haste about
any occupation. The perfect freedom from the universal Yankee necessity
of motion, with which the brown, small hands fell before her, was as
thoroughly a part of her as the strange Indian scent which clung to
everything she touched, and sphered her like the atmosphere of another
world. He never could associate the idea of any kind of personal
care-taking with her dainty leisure, more than with the lili