In the end he persuaded her to make all sorts of opportunities to meet him when no one else knew they were together. Even once most recklessly on a warm and moonless night of May's languorous decline to June he took her in the canoe far away up the river; and when they floated home dawn was already glistening on the banks and on the prow of their ghostly canoe. Through bird-song and rosy vapours she fled from him to her silent room, while he stood in a trance and counted each dewy footstep that with silver traceries marked her flight across the lawn. ANOTHER SUMMER _June_ Michael Fane stayed on into June, and the fancy came to Pauline that he knew of these meetings with Guy at night. It enraged her with jealousy to think that he might have been taken into Guy's confidence so far and the prejudice against him grew more violent every day. She already had enough regrets for having given way to Guy's persuasion, and the memory of that last return at dawn to her cool reproachful room haunted her more bitterly when she thought of its no longer being a secret. The knowledge that Guy was soon going to leave Plashers Mead was another torment, for though in a way she was glad of his wanting to make the determined effort, she could not help connecting the resolve with his friend's visit, and in consequence of this her one desire was to upset the plan. The sight of Richard and Margaret progressing equably toward their marriage early in August also made her jealous, and she began unreasonably to ascribe to her sister an attitude of superiority that she allowed to gall her: and whenever Richard was praised by any of the family she could never help feeling now that the praise covered or implied a corresponding disparagement of Guy. With Monica she nearly quarrelled over religion, for though in her heart it occupied the old supreme place, her escapades at night, by the tacit leave they seemed to give Guy to presume that religion no longer counted as her chief resource, had led her for the first time to make herself appear outwardly indifferent. In fact she now dreaded going to church, because she felt that if she once surrendered to the holy influence she would suffer again all the remorse of the winter that now by desperate deferment she was able for a little while to avoid. On top of all this vexation of soul she was angry with Guy because he seemed unable to realize that they were both walking on the edge of an abyss, and that all this abandonment of themselves to the joy of the fugitive season was a vain attempt to cheat fate. At such an hour she was naturally jealous that a friend's private affairs should occupy so much of Guy's attention, when he himself was walking blindly toward the doom of their love that now sometimes in flashes of horrible clarity she beheld at hand. Guy, however, persisted in trying to force Michael upon her: the jealousy such attempts fostered made her more passionate when she was