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 times almost pitiful, appeared to melt away. She laughed at him. She even watched him slyly from the corner of her eyes, but not in the old hostile fashion. It was more the way one would watch a charming little boy, fearful lest his knowledge of the admiration might give him an advantage.

It could not have been the weather alone which so changed her. There were other things, among them beyond all doubt Callendar himself and the friendship which he had given her, the same friendship which his mother and even Sabine in her brusque, shy way had offered. They were friends in a way no one, save Lily, had ever been before. It is possible that there came to her on this soft warm day a knowledge of her kinship with these people, of a bond which if undefinable was none the less certain and secure. They had nothing to gain from her and they were not concerned with subduing her; they did not seek to change her in any way at all. They were like her old Aunt Julia and the mysterious Lily, who had warned her not to let people make her fit a pattern, not to let them drag her down to the level of their own mediocrity; she understood now what Lily meant. These were people who, by some quality of honesty that was almost a physical thing, had attained an aristocracy of their own, a state which had its foundations in that very honesty. There was, too, a distinction about them of a sort beyond such individuals as the genteel, decayed Mr. Wyck, May Seton and her giggles, Mr. Bunce who was so robust and kind, and (this thought must have occurred to her) even Clarence whose kindly humbleness barred him forever. They were not muddled; they stood outlined, for all their strangeness, with a sharp clarity.

It was an understanding that had come to her over a long time dimly as through a mist. To-day she knew it. She began to understand why there were some people whom she admired and some for whom she could have in her heart contempt or at best an emptiness that bordered upon pity.

So she walked very happily with the fascinating, dark young man, content perhaps that she might go on thus forever, that she