At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of relief into the expression of friendly interest with which he grasped her hand. “You really do agree with me, then? And you’ll give me a chance to talk things over with you?” She shook her head with a faint smile. “I’m not thinking of the stage. I’ve had another offer: that’s all.” The relief was hardly less great. After all, his personal responsibility ceased with her departure from Givre. “You’ll tell me about that, then--won’t you?” Her smile flickered up. “Oh, you’ll hear about it soon...I must catch Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard.” She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and confronted him. “I’ve been odious to you--and not quite honest,” she broke out suddenly. “Not quite honest?” he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of wonder. “I mean, in seeming not to trust you. It’s come over me again as we talked that, at heart, I’ve always KNOWN I could...” Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his for a swift instant of reminder and appeal. For the same space of time the past surged up in him confusedly; then a veil dropped between them. “Here’s Effie now!” she exclaimed. He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her hand in Owen Leath’s. Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow was at once aware of the change effected by the young man’s approach. For a moment Sophy Viner’s cheeks burned redder; then they faded to the paleness of white petals. She lost, however, nothing of the bright bravery which it was her way to turn on the unexpected. Perhaps no one less familiar with her face than Darrow would have discerned the tension of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to a shining darkness. But her observer was less struck by this than by the corresponding change in Owen Leath. The latter, when he came in sight, had been laughing and talking unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye fell on Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers. The change, for Darrow, was less definable; but, perhaps for that reason, it struck him as more sharply significant. Only--just what did it signify? Owen, like Sophy Viner, had the kind of face which seems less the stage on which emotions move than the very stuff they work in. In moments of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on a stream. Darrow, through the rapid flight of the shadows, could not seize on any specific indication of feeling: he merely perceived that the young man was unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss Viner, and that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of implications.