After dinner when Monica, Margaret and Pauline were preparing for a trio, Mrs. Grey said confidentially to Guy: "You mustn't expect Francis--the Rector to realize at once that you and Pauline are engaged. And of course it isn't exactly an engagement yet. You mustn't see her too often. You're both so young. Indeed, as Francis said, children really." Then the trio began, and Guy in the tall Caroline chair lived every note that Pauline played on her violin, demanding of himself what he had done to deserve her love. He looked round once at Mrs. Grey in the other chair, and marked her beating time while like his own her thoughts were all for Pauline. In the heart of that music Guy was able to say anything and he could not resist leaning over and whispering to Mrs. Grey: "I adore her." "So do I," said the mother, breaking not a bar in her beat and gazing with soft eyes at that beloved player. When the music stopped, Guy felt a little embarrassed by the remembrance of his unreserved avowal; yet evidently it had seemed natural to Mrs. Grey, for when he was saying good-bye in the hall, she whispered to Pauline that she could walk with Guy a short way along the drive. His heart leapt to the knowledge that here at last was the final sanction of his love for her. Pauline flung round her shoulders that white frieze coat in which he had first beheld her under the moon, misty, autumnal, a dream within a dream; and now they were actually walking together. He touched her arm half-timidly, as if even so light a gesture could destroy this moment. "Pauline, Pauline!" He saw her clear eyes in the February starshine and folding her close he kissed her mouth. When he woke, he was at home; and for hours he sat entranced, knowing that never again for as long as he lived would he feel upon his lips as now the freshness of Pauline's first kiss. The rest of that February went by with lengthening eves that died on the dusky riot of blackbirds in the rhododendrons. Here and there in mossy corners primroses were come too soon, seeming all aghast and wan to behold themselves out of the cloistral earth, while the buds of the daffodils were still upright and would not hang their heads till driven by the wooing of the windy March sun. The grey-eyed virginal month, that is of no season and must as often bear the malice of Winter's retreat as the ruffianly onset of Spring, had now that very seriousness which suited Guy's troth. Rules had been made with which neither he nor Pauline were discontented, and so through all that February Guy went twice a week to the Rectory and counted himself rich in Mrs. Grey's promise that he and Pauline should sometimes be allowed, when the season was full-fledged, to go for walks together. At present, however, the Rectory garden must be a territory large enough for their love.