a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate
colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. There
were fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It was
almost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched
reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and
disappeared up Main Street.

Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was
empty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the
upward slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoon
light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built
houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new
and unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might have
sheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range of
the boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately
enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the
graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced
it before Mrs. Randall's day.

Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into
view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost
deserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built,
graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directly
under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.

It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim lines
and perfection of detail would have shown without the English
chauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant,
a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, and
disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below.

She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in his
corner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the old
creaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, and
then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped
just inside the door, and looked at him.

Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as
June itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made
you forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared
in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoes
that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers
in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high a