“It would be wonderful to care for just one person, _always_,” she continued intently: “I had a dream when I was quite young.... I dreamed that a marvellous happiness would follow a constancy like that. Father rather laughs at me, and quotes Shakespeare--the 'one foot on land and one on shore' thing. Perhaps, but it's too bad.” Anthony gravely considered this new idea in relation to his own, hitherto lamented, lack of experience. It dawned upon him that the idea of manly success he had cherished would appear distasteful to Eliza Dreen. She had indirectly extolled the very thing of which he had been secretly ashamed. He thought in conjunction with her of the familiar group at the drugstore, and in this light the latter retreat suffered a disconcerting change: Thomas Meredith appeared sly and trivial, and unhealthy; Williams an empty braggard; Craik ineffectual, untidy. He surveyed himself without enthusiasm. “You are different from any one I ever knew,” he told her. “Oh, there are millions of me,” she returned; “but you are different. I didn't like you for a sou at first; but there is something about you like--like a very clear spring of water. That's idiotic, but it's what I mean. There is an early morning feeling about you. I am very sensitive to people,” she informed him, “some make me uncomfortable directly they come into the room. There was a curé at Etretat I perfectly detested, and he turned out to be an awful person.” Her name was called unmistakably across the lawn, and she rose. “They're all furious,” she announced, without moving further. Her face was pale, immaterial, in the gloom; her wide eyes dark, disturbing. A minute gold watch on her wrist ticked faintly, and--it seemed to Anthony--in furious haste. Something within him, struggling inarticulately for expression, hurt; an oppressive emotion beat upon his heart. He uttered a period about seeing her again. “Some day you may show me the place where the fall sounds and the owls hunt. No, don't come with me.” She turned and fled. An unreasoning conviction seized Anthony that a momentous occasion had overtaken him; he was unable to distinguish its features, discover it grave or gay; but, wrapped in the impenetrable veil of the future, it enveloped and permeated him, swept in the circle of his blood's circulation, vibrated in the cords of his sensitive ganglia. He returned slowly to the house: the brilliantly-lit, dancing figures seemed the mere figments of a febrile dream; but the music apparently throbbed within his brain. Ellie's cool voice recreated his actual sphere. He found their hack, the driver slumbering doubled on the seat. The latter rose stiffly, and stirred his drowsing animal into a stumbling walk. Beyond the illuminated entrance to Hydrangea House the countryside lay profoundly dim to where the horizon flared with the pale reflection of distant lightning.