on my palate. I was not quite ready to
find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought
shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house and probably
mistaken me for a tramp.

Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adventure
was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no
thought of return.

With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in
town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my
luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house
by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend
it to be over long. To be a constraint upon the household I had
established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned.
It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to
stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too
long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time.

So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my
life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which
there was no turning back.

CHAPTER V

"The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."
--THE COURTIN'.

I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with
motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even
the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with
yellow sparkles.

The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely
walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow
affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been--all
united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel
drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochere, inviting the wheels of my
car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The
new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If
the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its
arms to me and laughed an invitation.

As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around
the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly
realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house!
After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.

She was tanned and actuall