While Maurice stood talking with Mrs. Carstang, the new grief and the old strangely neutralized each other. It was as if they met and grappled, and he had numb peace. The woman of his first love made him proud of that early bond. She was more than she had been then. But Lily moved past him with a smile. Her dancing was visible music. It had a penetrating grace—hers, and no other person's in the world. The floating of a slim nymph down a forest avenue, now separating from her partner, and now joining him at caprice, it rushed through Maurice like some recollection of the Golden Age, when he had stood imprisoned in a tree. There was little opportunity to do anything but watch her, for she was more in demand than any other girl in the casino. Hop nights were her unconscious ovations. He took a kind of aching delight in her dancing. For while it gratified an artist to the core, it separated her from her lover and gave her to other men. Next morning he waited for her in the study with a restlessness which would not let him sit still. More than once he went as far as the oak-tree to watch for a glimmer. But when Lily finally appeared at the door he pretended to be very busy with papers on his desk, and looked up, saying, “Oh!” The morning was chill, and she seemed a fair Russian in fur-edged cloth as she put her cold fingers teasingly against his neck. “Are you working hard?” “Trying to. I am behind.” “But if there is a good wind this afternoon you are not to forget the Carstangs' sail They will be here only a day or two, and you mustn't neglect them. Mrs. Carstang told me if I saw you first to invite you.” Maurice met the girl's smiling eyes, and the ice of her hand went through him. “Isn't Mrs. Carstang lovely! As soon as I saw you come in last night, I knew she was—the other woman.” “You didn't look at me.” “I can see with my eyelashes. Do you know, I have often thought I should love her if I were a man!” There was not a trace of jealousy in Lily's gentle and perfect manner. “You resemble her,” said Maurice. “You have the blond head, and the same features—only a little more delicate.” “I have been in her parlor all morning,” said Lily. “We talked about you. I am certain, Maurice, Mrs. Carstang is in her heart still faithful to you.” That she should thrust the old love on him as a kind of solace seemed the cruelest of all. There was no cognizance of anything except this one maddening girl. She absorbed him. She wrung the strength of his manhood from him as tribute, such tribute as everybody paid her, even Mrs. Carstang. He sat like a rock, tranced by the strong control which he kept over himself. “I must go,” said Lily. She had not sat down at all. Maurice shuffled his papers. “Good-bye,” she spoke. “Good-bye,” he answered. She did not ask, “Are you coming down the trail with me?” but ebbed softly away, the swish of her silken petticoat subsiding on the grassy avenue.