ted
homewards; the joy of seeing my mother and grandfather and dear old Krok
and George Hamon--Uncle George by adoption, failing that closer
relationship which Providence had denied him--sympathetic listener to all
our childish troubles and kindly rescuer from endless scrapes; the biting
intensity of longing to meet Carette again, and to find out how things were
with her and how things were between us, a longing that taught me the
meaning of heartache.

For this was how matters stood between us--at least as I saw them. Each
time I came home I managed, in one way or another, to get a sight, at all
events, of Carette, though in some cases little more. Twice I stormed the
maiden fortress in George Road, and ran the gauntlet of the Miss Maugers
with less discomfiture than on the first occasion, through Miss Maddy's
sympathy and my added weight of years and experience. And once Carette was
making holiday with Aunt Jeanne, and Beaumanoir saw more of me than did
Belfontaine.

And my very vivid recollection of all those times is this--that Carette
grew more beautiful each time I saw her, both in mind and body; that my
feeling for her grew in me beyond all other growth, though the years were
building me solidly; and that a fear sprang up in me at last that she was
perhaps going to grow out of my reach, as she certainly was growing out of
my understanding.

Each time we met her greeting was of the warmest, and had in it the
recollection of those earlier days. That, I said to myself, was the real
Carette.

And then there would gradually come upon us that thin veil of distance, as
though the years and the growth and the experiences of life were setting us
a little apart. And that, I said, was the Miss Maugers.

For my part I would have had Carette as satisfied with my sole
companionship as in the days when we romped bare-legged among the pools and
rocks, and woke the basking gulls and cormorants with our shouts, and dared
the twisting currents with unfettered limbs and no thought of wrong. These
things in all their fulness of delight were, of course, no longer possible
to us. But the joyous spirit of them I would fain have retained, and I
found it slipping elusively away.

We were, in fact, and inevitably, putting away the things of our childhood
and becoming man and woman, with all the wider and deeper feelings incident
thereto. The changes were inevitable and--Carette grew in some ways more
quickly than I did. So that, whe