, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan--his Megan
could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coarse blouse, and
tam-o'-shanter cap he was wont to see her in. The young woman had come
back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst eyed her laying them
against her own modish figure. There was one whose colour he liked, a
dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in it was beyond him. The young
woman went away, and brought some more. But on Ashurst there had now
come a feeling of paralysis. How choose? She would want a hat too,
and shoes, and gloves; and, suppose, when he had got them all, they
commonised her, as Sunday clothes always commonised village folk! Why
should she not travel as she was? Ah! But conspicuousness would matter;
this was a serious elopement. And, staring at the young woman, he
thought: 'I wonder if she guesses, and thinks me a blackguard?'

"Do you mind putting aside that grey one for me?" he said desperately at
last. "I can't decide now; I'll come in again this afternoon."

The young woman sighed.

"Oh! certainly. It's a very tasteful costume. I don't think you'll get
anything that will suit your purpose better."

"I expect not," Ashurst murmured, and went out.

Freed again from the suspicious matter-of-factness of the world, he took
a long breath, and went back to visions. In fancy he saw the trustful,
pretty creature who was going to join her life to his; saw himself and
her stealing forth at night, walking over the moor under the moon, he
with his arm round her, and carrying her new garments, till, in some
far-off wood, when dawn was coming, she would slip off her old things
and put on these, and an early train at a distant station would bear
them away on their honeymoon journey, till London swallowed them up, and
the dreams of love came true.

"Frank Ashurst! Haven't seen you since Rugby, old chap!"

Ashurst's frown dissolved; the face, close to his own, was blue-eyed,
suffused with sun--one of those faces where sun from within and without
join in a sort of lustre. And he answered:

"Phil Halliday, by Jove!"

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh! nothing. Just looking round, and getting some money. I'm staying on
the moor."

"Are you lunching anywhere? Come and lunch with us; I'm here with my
young sisters. They've had measles."

Hooked in by that friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a
hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolen