Indistinct shapes passed the windows, each--since it might be she--carrying to him a thrill; indistinguishable voices reached him, the vague tones--they might be hers--chiming like bells on his straining senses. The world, life, was so beautiful that it brought an obstruction into his throat; he drew the back of his hand across his eyes, and, to his surprise, found that it was wet. Presently, the lights sank on the lower floor and reappeared above. The blinding whiteness of the thought of Eliza sleeping seared his brain like a flare of powder. When the house retreated unrelieved into the gloom he rose and slowly retraced his steps. He lit a cigarette; the match burned with a steady flame in the stillness; but, in an unnamed impulse, he flung both aside, and filled his lungs with the elysian June air. XII THE next afternoon, returning from the unloading of a grain car at his father's warehouse, he discovered a smartly saddled horse fast to the marble hitchingpost before his door. It hardly required the glance at the silver “D” on the headstall to inform him who was within. He found Ellie and Eliza Dreen in the corner by the Canton tea service, consuming Pekoe and gingerbread dicky birds. Eliza nodded and smiled over her shoulder, and resumed an animated projection of an excursion in canoes on the Wingohocking. She wore a severe coat over white breeches and immaculate boots with diminutive gold spurs. Beneath a flat straw hat her hair was confined by a broad ribband low upon her neck, while a pink stock was held in position by a gaily-checked waistcoat. Anthony dropped with affected ease on the sofa, and covertly studied the delicate line of her cheek. He now recalled indignantly that Mrs. Dreen had said Eliza was not good-looking; while her reference to Eliza's veracity had been entirely superfluous. She turned toward him, finally, with an engaging query. He saw across her nose a faint trail of the most delightful freckles in the world; her eyes were blue, that amazing blue of bachelor's buttons; while her mouth--he would have sworn this the first time such simile had been applied to that feature--was like a roseleaf. He made a totally inadequate reply, when Ellie rose, and, plate in hand, vanished in quest of a fresh supply of gingerbread. A sort of desperate, blundering courage took possession of him: “I have been thinking a lot about you,” he told her; “last night I sat on your grass and wondered which was your window.” “What a silly I--we were on the porch all evening.” “It wasn't that I wanted to talk to you so much,” he tried to explain his instinctive impulses, desires, “as just to be near you.”