Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/60

 He woke, next morning, with a start, and lay blinking at the warm May morning that shone in his window. What—what was it that had happened? Miss Margaret! She had He groped under his pillow for his watch; it was eight o'clock. She had gone. Miss Margaret had gone.

The light suddenly looked hard and cold, framed in the sash, like a prison window. His face went blank. The day held no promise. He lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.

It is not in action, but in the intervals of thought, that character grows; and for the next few days Don went about in a quiet muse that aged him more than he knew. He shunned the ravine; he worked with a sort of stupid diligence; and not until Saturday did he even so much as read anything but a school-book. But on Saturday morning he took up his "Faerie Queene " again, and with the first words of the poem a terrible longing gripped him at the heart. He thrust the book in his pocket and hurried out of doors, his cap over his eyes, half-running.

He came breathless to the top of the Park, to the tree under which she used to meet him; and there he stopped, and smiled, and drew a long breath. When he went on again, it was very slowly, his head a little bowed; and when he came to the narrow path that led down into the gully, he stepped back to let her go ahead of him, and nodded and laughed.

At midday, he came out into the road again, with the same slow air. There was no pathetic wistfulness in his face. There was something set and blind in his gaze, but there was also a dreamy smile. And