Her feminine instinct vaguely alarmed, she replied, "Yes, indeed, but it is getting late. Had n't we better go in?" What lent the unusual intonation of timidity to her voice? Certainly nothing that she could have explained. "Not quite yet, Mary," he answered, turning his gaze once more fully upon her. Her eyes dropped before his, and a moment after fluttered up to find an explanation for their behavior, only to fall again in blind panic. For, mingling unmistakably with the curiosity with which he was still studying her features, was a newborn expression of appropriation and passionate complacency. Her senses whirled in a bewilderment that had a suffocating sweetness about it. Though she now kept her eyes on the ground, she felt his constant sidewise glances, and, desperately seeking relief from the conscious silence that enveloped them like a vapor of intoxicating fumes, she forced herself to utter the merest triviality she could summon to her lips: "See that house." The husky tones betrayed more agitation than the ruse concealed. He answered as irrelevantly as she had spoken, "Yes, indeed, so it is." That was their only attempt at conversation. For a half hour--it might have been much more or much less--they walked in this way, thrilling with the new magnetism that at once attracted and estranged them with an extraordinary sense of strangeness in familiarity. At length they paused under the little porch of Miss Rood's cottage, where he commonly bade her good-evening after their walks. The timidity and vague alarms that had paralyzed her while they were walking disappeared as he was about to leave her, and she involuntarily returned his unusual pressure of her hand. A long time after, behold her still encircled in his arms, not blushing, but pale and her eyes full of a soft, astonished glow! "Oh, Robert!" was all she had said after one first little gasp. They never met George or Mabel again. Mrs. Morgan learned subsequently that two young people from the city answering their description had been guests at the opposite house, and had left Plainfield the morning after the events hereinbefore set forth, and drew her conclusions accordingly. But her husband preferred to cherish the secret belief that his theory that memories might become visible had proved true in one instance at least. End of Project Gutenberg's A Summer Evening's Dream, by Edward Bellamy