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 in his mind when he had started out in the morning—a plan slowly and carefully formed during the last fourteen days since last he had seen Cicely Morgan.

If the day proved fine (and it did), he had decided to stay over till the evening train this week, if Cicely would let him (and he had an idea she would), hire one of those old-fashioned bob-sleigh affairs, and escape with her after dinner to the white, quiet hills behind Wallbridge. And let happen what might! But he couldn't suggest such a plan to her after her eyes had flashed at him like that, just before dinner, and thereafter carefully and —persistently avoided meeting his. Well, perhaps it was just as well.

Queer about Cicely. It seemed to annoy her lately if he saw too much beauty in anything. And he did like beauty—even little unimportant, pinpricking bits of beauty, that interrupted you right in the midst of something serious, possibly, and made you exclaim about it. There was no one whose appreciation of beauty in art or music or literature was keener than Cicely Morgan's, but she seemed to think it unbecoming—'maudlin' was the word she used once—to enthuse over trivial things. He was sorry for that. He was very anxious to discover no serious differences of opinion or feeling between himself and Cicely Morgan.