still thought
that was the loveliest vision of her he had seen....

Then he remembered Mary Graham. She, too, had long loose hair that lay
in dark lengths about her shoulders, and her eyes, too, could shine ...
but she was a girl, and Sheila was a woman!... He was engaged to Mary,
of course ... well, was it an engagement? They had been sweethearts and
he had told her he loved her and she had said that she would marry him
... and all that ... but they were kids when that happened. Ninian had
called him a sloppy ass!... This was different. His feeling for Sheila
Morgan was different from his feeling for Mary Graham. He had never felt
for any one as he felt for Sheila. He seemed unaccountably to be more
aware of Sheila than he was of Mary. He could not altogether understand
this difference of sensation ... but sometimes when he had been with
Mary, he had forgotten that she was a girl ... she was just some one
with whom he was playing a game or going for a walk or taking a bathe in
the sea. But he could not forget that Sheila was a woman. When he had
danced with her and his arm was about her waist and her fingers were in
his ... he seemed to grow up. He felt as if something at which he had
been gazing uncomprehendingly for a long time, had suddenly become known
to him. He recognised something ... understood something which had
puzzled him.

"Let's dance again," he said, standing up before her.

"All right," she answered, rising and going to him.

"I love dancing," he said to her.

"Yes," she murmured in reply.

8

When the dance was over, he took her to her uncle's farm. Marsh,
overcome by headache, had gone home before the dance was ended, and
Henry felt glad of this. He waited in the porch of the schoolhouse while
Sheila put on her coat and wrap, and wondered why his feeling for her
was so different from his feeling for Mary Graham, and while he
wondered, she came to him, gathering up her skirts.

"Isn't the sky lovely?" she said, glancing up at the stars, as they
walked out of the school-yard into the road.

He glanced up too, but did not answer.

"Millions an' millions of them," she said. "You'd wonder the sky 'ud
hold them all!"

"Yes," he said.

"Many's a time I wonder about the stars," she went on. "Do you ever
wonder about them?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you think there's people in them, the same as there is on the
earth?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"This is a star, too, isn't it?" she asked.