She turned her head in the opposite direction, and her eyes became suddenly fixed and her body stiffened. A man was coming down the street, swinging lightly forward, looking over the tops of the houses toward the reddening peak of the Sugar Loaf. There was only one man in Virginia with that natural elegance of form, that carriage full of distinction and grace. For the first moment he did not see her, and in that moment June felt none of the secret elation that had been hers in the past at sudden sight of him. Instead, a thrill of repugnance passed through her, to be followed by a shrinking dread. She moved softly back from the balustrade, intending to slip into the hallway, when he turned his head and saw her. The old pleasure leaped into his face. She saw that he pronounced her name. He flung a cautious look about him and then crossed the road. With his hand on the gate he gazed up and said, with something of secrecy in his air and voice: “Have they all gone?” June’s affirmative was low. Her repugnance had vanished. Her desire to retreat had been paralyzed by the first sound of his voice. “And they’ve left you all alone?” The tone was soft with the caressing quality that to Jerry was second nature when an attractive woman listened. “Yes, they went to the station to see them off. I didn’t want to go, so I stayed,” she returned stammeringly. Jerry opened the gate. “Can I come up?” he said in the lowest tone that would reach her ear. “I hate to think of you all by yourself up there, and Rosamund gone.” June looked at him and murmured an affirmative that he could not have heard, but he put his foot on the lowest step. She dropped her eyes to her hands resting on the balustrade, while the beating of her heart increased with his ascending footfall. When he had reached her side she was trembling. In those few sentences from the bottom of the stairs he seemed suddenly to have obliterated the past year. The words were ordinary enough, but his eyes, his tone, his manner as he now stood beside her, were those of the old Jerry, before Mercedes had stolen him away. She raised her eyes to his and immediately dropped them. The soft scrutiny of his gaze--the privileged gaze that travels over and dwells on a loved face, with no one to challenge its right--increased her flushed distress. Jerry, too, was moved. For both of them the moment was fraught with danger, and he knew it better than she. “You’re all tired out,” he said, with his tender tone slightly hoarse. “Let’s go in and sit down.” She led the way through the hall, now beginning to grow dim with the first evening shadows, into the long, bare parlor. There was a sofa drawn up against the wall and on this she sat, while Jerry placed a small gilded chair close in front of her. “How deserted it looks!” he said, gazing about the room. “I suppose everybody was here? I saw a perfect mob of people going down to the station.”