With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend it to be over long. To be a constraint upon the household I had established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned. It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time. So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which there was no turning back. CHAPTER V "The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'." --THE COURTIN'. I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with yellow sparkles. The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been--all united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochere, inviting the wheels of my car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its arms to me and laughed an invitation. As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house! After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change. She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little mouth turned up instead of down and developed--I looked twice--yes, developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite daringly, for Phillida. "Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired. She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I noticed she wore above her wedding ring that "diamond" which once had adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her hand for me to see.