The sordid meanness of the project was evident, but Dora Pilkington after six years of endurance, decided that she was willing to fall in with any scheme that would lead to freedom from the incessant taunts and nagging to which she was subject. As she looked at the moon she thought vaguely and sentimentally that perhaps he would fall in love with her, and it would turn out all right; as she thought of her awkwardness and badly made clothes, this faint hope died, and was succeeded by a resolution to capture by hook or crook the one eligible man within reach. The afternoon when Edwin came to tennis was a success. Dora played passably, and the only other woman was the doctor's young wife, absorbed in herself and her husband. Edwin stayed on to supper, an unusually pleasant meal at which Mr. Pilkington expanded conversationally, and Dora and her mother formed a smiling and apparently harmonious background. It was a lovely night. "Would you two young people like to walk down to the river?" asked Mrs. Pilkington. "May we? That would be more than charming," answered Edwin, and in a few moments Dora found herself strolling through the murmurous summer fields, with a young man saying to her ardently: "Do let's have a lot of tennis and walks and picnics, Miss Pilkington; there are so few people round here that you really must put up with me a good deal this summer." She felt a strange movement in her blood. It was going to be all right then; no need to plot and plan; she, Dora Pilkington, was embarking on a genuine romance. Her heart beat unevenly, and as she looked at Edwin's young face, clear and dark in the yellow moonlight, she thought suddenly: I love him; I'll do anything for him. The days that followed were busy and happy, but July merged into August and August into September, and the harvest was stacked in the fields among the shorn poppies. "Is nothing ever going to happen, Dora?" asked Mrs. Pilkington, and Dora asked herself the same question, still more bitterly. Apparently nothing was going to happen. Edwin Greene enjoyed and sought her company, but by no word had he ever suggested that his feelings for her were stronger than affection and gratitude towards an acquaintance who was making a dull summer less dull. One Saturday after a particularly trying lunch alone with her Mother, Dora walked by herself towards the river where she and Edwin had gone on that first most hopeful night. Edwin, lying in a canoe tethered to an overhanging tree, saw her white frock coming along the bank above him. He felt comfortably lazy and disinclined to make any move to greet her, but the disconsolate swing of the hat which she was carrying in her hand, touched him. He knew by this time that the relations between Dora and her mother were not of the happiest, and he guessed at the trouble that had marred the drowsy afternoon.