ere going for a few miles' walk along the roads.
He went over and raised the blind on the window. Overhead the moon
showed like a spot of bright saffron. A sort of misty haze seemed to
cling around the bushes and trees. The out-houses stood out white, like
buildings in a mysterious city. Somewhere there was the metallic whir
of a grasshopper, and in the distance a loon boomed again and again.

The little company passed down the yard. There was the sound of a
smothered titter, then a playful resounding slap, and a gurgling laugh
from one of the boys.

As he stood by the window he heard some one open the door and stand
on the threshold.

"Are you coming, Alice?" some one asked.

Michael James listened for the answer. He was taking in eagerly all
outside things. He wanted something to pass the time of waiting, as
a traveler in a railway station reads trivial notices carefully while
waiting for a train that may take him to the ends of the earth.

"Alice, are you coming?" was asked again.

There was no answer.

"Well, you needn't if you don't want to," he heard in an irritated
tone, and the speaker tramped down toward the road in a dudgeon. He
recognized the figure of Flanagan, the football-player, who was always
having little spats with the girl he was going to marry. He discovered
with a sort of shock that he was slightly amused at this incident.

From the road there came the shrill scream of one of the girls who had
gone out, and then a chorus of laughter. And against the background
of the figure behind him and of young Kennedy he began wondering at
the relationship of man and woman. He had no word for it, for "love"
was a term he thought should be confined to story-books, a word to be
suspicious of as sounding affected, a word to be scoffed at. But of
this relationship he had a vague understanding. He thought of it as
a criss-cross of threads binding one person to the other, or as a web
which might be light and easily broken, or which might have the strength
of steel cables and which might work into knots here and there and
become a tangle that could crush those caught in it.

It puzzled him how a thing of indefinable grace, of soft words on June
nights, of vague stirrings under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps
and fearful glances, might become, as it had become in the case of
himself, Kennedy, and what was behind him, a thing of blind, malevolent
force, a thing of sinister silence, a shadow that crushed.