She was on her feet in an instant, but she was badly startled. For, after all her reckonings, it was Justin—Justin, taking like herself his short cut through the woods to his tea—Justin, whom she had not seen for nearly a year—Justin, who was never going to speak to her again. She gave him a wavering, frightened smile—a smile that deprecated its own existence, that assured him that it held no graceless hint of welcome or intimacy, that it continued merely as the only salutation that the lips on which it trembled could at the moment attempt. And with that faded again and left a white face whiter. “Why, Laura!” repeated the miraculous Justin, in the kind, solemn voice that had not altered for all her wickedness, for all the war. She found hurried words in which to answer, excusing herself when there was no need. “I was going home. And I was late. So I came this way. I only stopped for a moment—to pick the violets——” She stooped for her basket, huddling into it all the little bunches that lay on the grass. She was thankful to have a use for her betraying hands. He was watching her, but she did not know what he thought, for she was afraid to look up and see. She had her basket filled too soon, and thereupon she stood like a schoolgirl, not knowing what to say or do. She moved a step or two at last, to enable him to give her good-bye and go his way. But his way was hers, it seemed: and he walked beside her in silence down the green grass lane, between the whispering, watching trees. If he thought of his tea he thought also, I suppose that Mrs. Cloud would keep it hot for him. He was quite right: his mother would have kept it hot for him till the crack of doom. But it is just possible that he did not think about his tea. Laura’s eyes were decorously on the increasing circle of sky at the end of the alley; yet with quick stolen glances now and then she gleaned news of him. She thought he looked tired, older—a grey look.... She thought he did not look well.... She disliked his yellowish clothes. They did not suit him.... Well—at least she had seen him in his uniform.... She had not realized before, she thought contradictorily, how jolly the ugly uniform could look.... She thought how ordinary every other soldier she had seen would look beside him.... She tried not to be ridiculously proud of him, because she had no right, no right—to that exquisite pride.... She thought that she had not been mistaken—there was no one in the world like him....