He experienced an agreeable thrill as it flashed upon him that this was no child, but a young woman who, knowing the large world, had suddenly awakened to a consciousness that encounters with strange young men by starlight were not to be prolonged forever. In the luminous dusk he noted anew the delicate perfectness of her face, the fine brow about which her hair had tumbled from her late exertions. Her eyes searched his face with honest curiosity--for an instant only. Then she stepped back, as though to mark a return to her original character, and answered her own question with an air of amused conviction: "It _is_ perfectly killing!" His hand fumbled the cap in his pocket. "Here's something I found down yonder--your clown's cap." She took it with a murmur of thanks, and darted away toward the bungalow. He heard her light step on the veranda and then a door closed with a sharp bang. Deering walked back to the inn with his head high and elation throbbing in his pulses. He observed groups of people playing bridge in the inn parlor, and he was filled with righteous contempt for them. The May air had changed his whole nature. He was not the William B. Deering who had meditated killing himself a few hours earlier. A new joy had entered into him; he was only afraid now that he might not live forever! Hood slept tranquilly, his bed littered with the afternoon's New York papers which evidently he had been scissoring when he fell asleep. Deering's attitude toward the strange vagrant had changed since his meeting with Pierrette. Hood might be as mad as the traditional hatter, and yet there was something--indubitably something--about the man that set him apart from the common run of mortals. Deering lay awake a long time rejoicing in his new life, and when he dreamed it was of balloon-like moons cruising lazily over woods and fields, pursued by innumerable Pierrettes in spotted trousers and pointed caps. V He awoke at seven, and looked in upon Hood, who lay sprawled upon his bed reading one of the battered volumes of Borrow he carried in his bag. "Get your tub, son; I've had mine and came back to bed to let you have your sleep out. Marvellous man--Borrow. Spring's the time to read him. We'll have some breakfast and go out and see what the merry old world has to offer." With nice calculation he tossed the book into the open bag on the further side of the room, rose, and stretched himself. Deering stifled an impulse to scoff at his silk pajamas as hardly an appropriate sleeping garb for one who professed to have taken vows of poverty. Hood noted his glance.