We agree about the flowers and the sunshine and the Canadian winter--about everything. "I think so often of those games we used to invent," she declares. "So do I," I say, "so do I." And then with a sudden boldness: "Once I broke a stick of yours, a rotten stick you thought a sound one. Do you remember?" Then we laugh together and seem to approach across a painful, unnecessary distance that has separated us. It vanishes for ever. "I couldn't now," she says, "smack your face like that, Stephen." That seems to me a brilliantly daring and delightful thing for her to say, and jolly of her to use my Christian name too! "I believe I scratched," she adds. "You never scratched," I assert with warm conviction. "Never." "I did," she insists and I deny. "You couldn't." "We're growing up," she cries. "That's what has happened to us. We shall never fight again with our hands and feet, never--until death do us part." "For better, or worse," I say, with a sense of wit and enterprise beyond all human precedent. "For richer, or poorer," she cries, taking up my challenge with a lifting laugh in her voice. And then to make it all nothing again, she exclaims at the white lilies that rise against masses of sweet bay along the further wall.... How plainly I can recall it all! How plainly and how brightly! As we came up the broad steps at the further end towards the tennis lawn, she turned suddenly upon me and with a novel assurance of command told me to stand still. "_There_," she said with a hand out and seemed to survey me with her chin up and her white neck at the level of my eyes. "Yes. A whole step," she estimated, "and more, taller than I. You will look down on me, Stephen, now, for all the rest of our days." "I shall always stand," I answered, "a step or so below you." "No," she said, "come up to the level. A girl should be smaller than a man. You are a man, Stephen--almost.... You must be near six feet.... Here's Guy with the box of balls." She flitted about the tennis court before me, playing with Philip against Guy and myself. She punished some opening condescensions with a wicked vigor--and presently Guy and I were straining every nerve to save the set. She had a low close serve I remember that seemed perfectly straightforward and simple, and was very difficult to return. § 6 All that golden summer on the threshold of my manhood was filled by Mary. I loved her with the love of a boy and a man. Either I was with Mary or I was hoping and planning to be with Mary or I was full of some vivid new impression of her or some enigmatical speech, some pregnant nothing, some glance or gesture engaged and perplexed my mind. In those days I slept the profound sweet sleep of youth, but whenever that deep flow broke towards the shallows, as I sank into it at night and came out of it at morning, I passed through dreams of Mary to and from a world of waking thought of her.