He wrote that evening in a fine frenzy of declamation against God, affirming in his verse the rights of man; but on reading the lines through next morning they seemed like the first vapours of adolescence; and when he turned for consolation to Shelley, he found that even a great poet's rage on behalf of man against God was often turgid enough. It was however a hopeful sign that he could still perceive what puddles these aerial fountains of song often left behind them, and he was glad to find that not all the value of critical experience had been destroyed by the imperative need to readjust his values of reality. Birdwood brought a note from Pauline just when Guy had burnt his effusion of the night before and come to the conclusion that as a polemical and atheistic rhymester he was of the very poorest quality. The gardener was inclined to be chatty, and when the weather and the flowers in season had been discussed at length, he observed that Miss Pauline was not looking so well as she ought to look. "You'll have to speak to her about it, Mr. Hazlenut." Birdwood had never learned to give Guy his proper name, and there had been many jokes between him and Pauline about this and many vows by Guy that one day he would address the gardener as Birdseed. How far away such foolish little jokes were seeming now. "It's been a tiring Spring," said Guy. "The East wind...." "Her cheeks isn't nothing like so rosy as they was," said the gardener. "You'll excuse the liberty I'm taking in mentioning them, but having known Miss Pauline since she couldn't walk ... why I happen to mention it is that there was a certain somebody up in the town who passed the remark to me and, I having to give him a piece of my mind pretty sharp on account of him talking so free, it sort of stuck in my memory and ... you don't think she's middling?" "Oh, no, I think she's quite well," said Guy. "Well, as long as you aren't worrited, I don't suppose I've got any call to be worrited; only anyone can't help it a bit when they see witches' cheeks on a young lady. She certainly does look middling, but maybe, as you say, it is this unnatural East wind." Birdwood touched his cap and retired, but his words had struck at Guy remorsefully while he walked away to a corner of the orchard, reading Pauline's letter. The starlings were piping a sweet monotony of Spring, and daffodils, that he and she had planted last Summer when they came back from Ladingford, haunted his path. _My darling,_