Longacre saw the deepening color of her cheek. As they stood, hers was not so far from his own. The look with which she had answered his proffer of escort—the look so out of proportion to the moment, so given in spite of herself—had stirred in him something equally ill-governed and inconsequent; had called out in him something at once more natural, and more spiritual, than he had imagined the existence of; something more powerful than he had ever expected to reckon with. This, then, was the intangible thing he had been dodging. How easily he was slipping into this dazzling emotion! The past seemed dropping away from him; the future was nebulous. He brought himself up short, angry that a man might so lightly become a cad. He had never liked the way this girl affected him. What place had this overpowering alien thing in his life, he wondered savagely. Yet he looked at Julia. Silent as she was, helpless, and not a little awkward, her very nearness elated him. When she turned to go he felt deserted. He snatched at any excuse to keep beside her. “May I walk to the house with you?” He knew that had been the wrong thing to say. “Of course,” she answered. Her lips trembled around the words. She had forgotten Cissy’s communication. Strange that a fact could be so unstable in the face of a personality! But in that moment her world was a short, green walk between fennel borders to a glass door. They drank in the overwhelming sweet of heliotrope. He walked stiffly beside her, looking straight before. She looked sidelong at him, and wondered what he thought of her. If he didn’t like it, why had he asked to walk with her? The gap in the hedge, the oleanders flaming beyond, brought back to her that morning she had called him across the grass. She wondered at herself. She could never have done it if she had known he was going to be so dreadful. Had she betrayed herself to this equivocal mystery? No, he wasn’t like any one else. She had always known it; and she was shocked at herself that just the look of him, when he was so disagreeable, should make her so happy. She wanted to keep him with her, and the glass door took on the aspect of inexorable fate. The gap in the hedge was the only loop-hole. She turned toward it with the fine assurance that carried her over her doubts. He stopped, blank at this unexpected manœuver. Did she want to get rid of him? He had believed that he wished himself out of it, but the thought of going away was unendurable.