"My dears, he frightened me to death," Pauline declared to her family when Mr. Hazlewood had left the Rectory. "Only I expect, you know, that really he's rather sweet."

"I don't think he approved of us very much," said Margaret.

"I didn't approve of him very much," said Monica.

"And where was Francis?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"Francis was a naughty boy," said Pauline.

Since they were sitting in the nursery, her mother allowed the christian name to pass without reproof.

"He was so exactly like Guy," said Margaret.

"Like Guy?" Pauline echoed, incredulously.

"Yes, of course. Didn't you notice that?" Margaret laughed.

"You're quite right, Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "How clever of you to see. Now, of course, I realize how much alike they were ... how clever you are!"

"Without Pauline," Margaret went on, "Guy might easily become his father all over again."

"But, my dears," said Pauline, "that would be terrible. I remember how frightened I was of Guy the first day he came to the Rectory, and if he grows more like his father, I don't think I shall ever be anything else but frightened of him, even if we live for ever. For, though I'm sure he's really very sweet, I don't believe one would ever get quite used to Mr. Hazlewood."

Yet when Pauline was alone and had an opportunity to look back upon the visit, its effect was rather encouraging than otherwise. For one thing, it curiously made Guy more actual, because until the personality of his father projected itself upon the scene of their love he had always possessed for Pauline a kind of romantic unreality. In the Spring days and Summer days which had seemed to dedicate themselves to the service of intimacy, Guy had talked a great deal of his life before they met, but the more he had told her, the more was she in the state of being unable to realize that the central figure of these old tales was not a dream. When he was with her, she was often in a daze of wonder at the credibility of being loved like this; and there was never an occasion of seeing him even after the briefest absence that did not hold in the heart of its pleasure a surprise at his return. The appearance of Mr. Hazlewood was a phenomenon that gave the pledge of prosaic authority to her love, like a statement in print that, however absurd or uncomfortable, has a value so far beyond mere talk. She had often been made rather miserable by Guy's tales of the ladies he had loved with airy heedlessness, but these heroines had all faded out in the unreality of his life apart from her, and they took their place with days of adventure described in Macedonia or with the old diversions of Oxford. The visit of Mr. Hazlewood with the chilly disapproval it had shed was more authentic than, for instance, the idea of Guy's dark-eyed mother, who had seemed in his narrations almost to threaten Pauline with her son's fairy ancestry, as if from the grave she might at any moment summon him away. Mr. Hazlewood had carried with him a wonderful assurance of ordinariness. The merely external resemblance between him and his son proved that Guy could grow old; and the sense of his opposition was a trifling discomfort in comparison with the assurance he offered of an imaginable future. She remembered that her first idea of Guy had been that of some one dry and cynical; and no doubt this first impression of his father was equally wrong. She who had been so shy and speechless was no doubt much to blame, and the family had done nothing to help out the situation. It had been unkind of her father to hide himself, since to Mr. Hazlewood, who could not have understood that it was the sort of thing her father would be sure to do, such behavior must have presented itself very oddly.

The Rector, on Pauline's remonstrating with him, was not at all penitent.

"When your marriage, my dear, comes on the horizon—I don't mind how faint a horizon—of the probable, then it will be time to discuss matters in the practical way I suppose Mr. Hazlewood would like them to be discussed. Moreover, in any case, I forgot that the worthy gentleman was coming."

Pauline was anxious to make excuses for the Rector to Guy, but Guy, when he came round next day, was only apologetic for his own father's behavior; and he and she came to a conclusion in the end that parents must be forgiven on account of their age.

"At the same time," Guy added, "I blame my father for his conventional outlook. He doesn't seem able to realize the extraordinary help that you are to my work. In fact, he doesn't realize that my work is work. He's been teaching for so many years that now he can no longer learn anything. Your father's behavior is reasonable. He doesn't take us quite seriously, but he leaves the situation to our disentanglement. Well, we shall convince him that nothing in the world is so simple as a love like ours; but the worst of my father is that even if he were convinced he would be more annoying than ever."

"You must make allowances, Guy. For one thing, how few people, even when they're young, understand about love. Besides, he's anxious about your career."

"What right has he to be anxious?" Guy burst out. "If I fail, I pay the penalty, not he."

"But he would be so hurt if you failed," she urged.

"Pauline, if you can say that, you can imagine that I will fail. Even you are beginning to have doubts."

"I haven't any doubts," she whispered. "I know you will be famous. And yet I have doubts of another sort. I sometimes wonder if I shall be enough when you are famous?"

The question she had raised launched Guy upon a sea of eloquence. He worried no more about his father, but only protested his dependence upon Pauline's love for everything that he would ever have accomplished.

"Yes, but I think I shall seem dull one day," she persisted, with a shake of the head.

"No, no. How could you seem dull to me?"

"But I'm not clever...."

"Avoid that wretched word," he cried. "It can only be applied to thieves, politicians, and lawyers. I have told you a thousand times what you are to me, and I will not tell you again because I don't want to be an egotist. I don't want to represent you to myself as a creature that exists for me. You are a being to whom I aspire. If we live for ever I shall have still to aspire to you and never be nearer than the hope of deserving you."

"But your poetry, Guy, are you sure I appreciate it? Are you sure I'm not just a silly little thing lost in admiration of whatever you do?"

Guy brushed her doubts aside.

"Poetry is life trembling on the edge of human expression," he declared. "You are my life, and my poor verse faints in its powerlessness to say so. I always must be alone to blame if the treasure that you are is not proved to the world."

How was she to convince him of her unworthiness, how was she to persuade this lover of hers that she was too simple a creature for his splendid enthronement? Suddenly one day he would see her in all her dullness and ordinariness, and, turning from her in disillusion, he would hold her culpable for anything in his work that might seem to have betrayed his ambition.

"Guy," she called into the future, "you will always love me?"

"Will there ever be another Pauline?"

"Oh, there might be so easily."

"Never! Never! Every hour, every moment cries 'never!'"

In her heart she told herself that at least none but she could ever love him so well; and in the strange confidence his father's visit had given to her she told him in her turn how every hour and every moment made her more dependent upon his love.

"I want nothing but you, nothing, nothing. I've given up everything for you."

"What have you given up?" he demanded, at once, jealously and triumphantly regarding her.

"Oh, nothing really; but all the foolish little interests. Nothing, my dearest, only pigeons and music and working woolen birds and visiting poor people. Such foolish little things ... and yet things that were once upon a time frightfully important."

"You mustn't give up your music and your pigeons."

They both laughed at the absurd conjunction.

"How can I play when I'm thinking of you always, every second? Why, when I do anything but think of you, every object and every word floats away as it does when I'm tired and trying to keep awake in a big room."

"You can play to me," he argued, "even when I'm not there."

"Guy darling, I do, I do; but you've no idea how hopelessly playing to an absent lover destroys the time."

The memory of Mr. Hazlewood's visit was soon lost in the celebration of their anniversary month. As they had promised themselves in Summer, they went on moonlit expeditions to gather mushrooms; and at the waning of the moon they rose early on many milk-white dawns instead, when the mushrooms at such an hour were veritably the spoil of dew, gleaming in their baskets under veils of gossamer. On these serene mornings the sound of autumnal bird-song came to them out of misted trees, so that they used to talk of the woods in the next Spring-time, themselves moving about the wan vapors with that very air of people who scarcely live in the present. There was in this plaintive music of robins and thrushes a regret for the days of Summer spent together that were now passed away, and yet a more robust melody might have affronted the wistful air of these milk-white dawns. The frail notes of the birds hinted at silence beyond, and through the opalescent and transuming landscape Guy and Pauline floated in fancy once more down the young Thames from Ladingford. The sad stillness of the year's surrender to decline admonished them to garner these hours, making a ghost even of the sun, as if to warn them of the fleeting world, the covetous and furtive world. They wonderfully enjoyed these hours, but Pauline, when at breakfast the mushrooms came fizzling to the table, could never believe that she had been with Guy, and she used often to be discontented on being reminded by her mother of how much of the day she had already spent in his company. Looking back at these immaterial mornings of autumnal mist, she saw them upon the confines of sleep: silvery spaces they seemed that were not robbed from any familiar time.

There was during all this month a certain amount of congratulation which had to be endured, and Margaret was angry one day because Mr. and Mrs. Ford came over from Little Fairfield and alluded at tea to their hope of Richard and her soon being engaged. Pauline was naturally subject to the inquisitiveness of everybody, but as she could not without being absent-minded talk about anything except Guy, she found the general curiosity not very troublesome. Guy, however, resented this atmosphere of inquiry and was always more and more anxious to carry her out of reach of Wychford gossip.

One day in mid-October they had set out together with the intention of taking a long walk to the open upland country on the other side of the town, when, as they were going up High Street, they saw two of the local chatter-boxes.

"I will not stop and talk to Mrs. Brydone and Mrs. Willsher," Guy grumbled. "Let's cut up Abbey Lane."

They turned aside and were making their way to the path that led under the Abbey wall to the highroad, when they saw Dr. Brydone and his son coming from that direction.

"Really, there's a conspiracy of Brydones to waylay us this afternoon," Guy exclaimed, petulantly. "We shall have to go through the Abbey grounds."

Pauline had passed the wicket, which he had impulsively flung open, before she realized the violation of one of her age-long rules.

"It's really rather jolly in here to-day," said Guy. "I think we're duffers not to come more often, you know."

The Autumn wind was booming round the plantation and sweeping up the broad path down the hillside with a skelter of leaves that gave a wild gaiety to the usually tristful scene.

"Why shouldn't we explore inside?" suggested Guy. "There's something so exhilarating about this great west wind. Almost one could fancy it might blow away that ghost of a house."

Pauline hesitated; since earliest childhood the Abbey had oppressed her with ill omen, and she could not overcome her prejudice in a moment.

"You're not really afraid when you're with me?" he persisted.

Pauline surrendered, and they went across the etiolated lawn towards the entrance. The wind was roaring through every crevice, and the ivy was scratching restlessly at the panes or shivering where through the gaps it had crept in with furry tendrils.

"It's rather fun to be walking up this staircase as if this were our own house," said Guy.

Pauline had an impulse to go back, and she made a quick step to descend.

"Where are you going?"

"Guy, I think I feel afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Oh, not of anything. Just afraid."

"Come, foolish one," he whispered, gently.

And she, though it was against her will, followed him up the echoing empty stairs.

They went into every room, and Guy declared how they with their love were restoring to each of them the life it had known in the past. Here was a pleasant fancy, and Pauline hoped it might be true. In the thought that their presence was in a way the bestowal of charity on these maltreated halls she lost much of her alarm and began to enjoy the solitude spent with Guy. Whether they looked out at the wilderness that once was a garden or at the rank lawn in front, the thunderous wind surging round the house brought them closer together in the consciousness of their own shelter and their own peace in this deserted habitation.

"Now confess," said Guy, "haven't we been rather stupid to neglect such a refuge?"

"But, Guy, we haven't needed a refuge very often," objected Pauline, who, for all that she was losing some of her dread of the Abbey, was by no means inclined to set up a precedent for going there too often.

"Not yet," he admitted. "But with Winter coming on and the wet days that will either keep us indoors or else prevent us from doing anything but walk perpetually along splashy roads, we sha'n't be sorry to have a place like this to which we can retreat in comparative comfort."

"Oh, Guy," Pauline asked, anxiously, "I suppose we ought not to come here?"

"Why on earth not?"

"Don't be angry. But the idea just flashed through my mind that perhaps Mother wouldn't like us to come here very often."

He sighed deeply.

"Really, sometimes I wonder what is the good of being engaged. Are we for ever to be hemmed in by the conventions of a place like Wychford?"

"Oh, but I expect Mother wouldn't mind, really," said Pauline, reassuring herself and him. "I'm always liable to these fits of doubt. Sometimes I feel quite weighed down by the responsibility of being grown up."

She laughed at herself, and the laughter ringing through the hollow house seemed to return and mock her with a mirthless echo.

"Oh, Guy!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Guy, I wish I hadn't laughed then! Did you hear how strangely it seemed as if the house laughed back at me?"

She had gripped his arm, and Guy, startled by her gesture, exclaimed rather irritably that she ought to control her nerves.

"Well, don't let's stay in this room. I don't like the green light that the ivy is giving your face."

"What next?" he grumbled. "Well, let's go out on the balcony."

They went half-way down-stairs to the door that opened on a large balustraded terrace with steps leading from either end into the ruined garden. The wind beat against them with such force here that very soon they went back into the house, and Guy found a small room looking out on the terrace, in which he persuaded Pauline to come and sit for a while. All the other rooms in the house had been so dreadfully decayed, so much battered by every humiliation time could inflict upon them, that this small parlor was in contrast positively habitable. It gave the impression of being perhaps the last place to which the long-vanished owners had desperately held. There was a rusty hob-grate, and in the window a deep wooden seat; while the walls were still painted with courtly scenes, and the inlaid wooden floor gave a decency which everywhere else had been destroyed by the mouldering boards.

"I say, it would be fun to light a fire some time," said Guy. "This is just the room for us."

"It's rather a frightening room," said Pauline, doubtfully.

"Dearest, you insist on being frightened by everything this afternoon," he answered.

"No, but this room is frightening, Guy," she persisted. "This seems so near to being lived in by dead people."

"And what can dead people do to you and me?" he asked, with that sidelong mocking smile which she half disliked, half loved.

Pauline looked back over her shoulder once; then she came across to where he invited her to sit in the window-bay.

"I ought to have brought my diamond pencil," he said. "This is such a window for mottoes. Why, I declare! Somebody has scrawled one. Look, Pauline. Pauline, look! 1770. R.G.P.F. inside a heart. Oh, what a pity it wasn't P.G. for Pauline Grey. Still, the G can stand for Guy. Oh, really, I think it's an extraordinary coincidence! P.F.? We can find out which of the Fentons that was. We'll look up in the history of the family. Darling, I am so glad we came to this little room. Think of those lovers who sat here once like us. Pauline, it makes me cherish you so."

She sat upon his knees, because the window-seat was dusty, and because in this place of fled lovers she wanted to be held closely to his heart.

The wind boomed and moaned, and the sun breaking through the clouds lit up the walls with a wild yellow light.

Suddenly Pauline drew away from his arms.

"Shadows went by the window," she cried. "Guy, I feel afraid. I feel afraid. There's a footstep."

She was lily-white whose cheeks had but now been burning so fiercely.

"Nonsense," he replied, half roughly. "It was that burst of sunshine."

"Guy, there were shadows. Hark!"

She nearly screamed, because footsteps were going down the stairs of the empty house.

"It must have been the caretaker," said Guy.

"I saw a white person. Guy, never, never let us come here again."

"You don't seriously think you saw a ghost?" he asked.

"Guy, how do I know? Come away into the air. We should never have come here. Oh, this room! I feel as if I should faint."

"I'll see who it was," said Guy, springing up.

"No, don't leave me. Wait for me. I'll come with you."

They hurried down the stairs, and when they reached the pallid lawn they saw Margaret and Monica in their white coats disappearing among the yew-trees by the entrance.

"There are your ghosts," said Guy, laughing.

Yet, though Guy scoffed at her fears, Pauline was not sure that she would not have preferred a ghost to that disquieting passage of her sisters without hail or comment. Yet perhaps, after all, they had not seen her and Guy in that sinister small parlor.

"Shall we catch them up?" he asked.

And Pauline, with a breath of dismay, was conscious of an inclination to pretend that they had not been here this afternoon. She discovered herself, as it were, proposing to Guy that they should not overtake Monica and Margaret. A secretiveness she had never known before had seized her soul, and she hoped that their presence in the Abbey was unknown. Guy divined at once that she did not want to overtake her sisters, and he kept her under the trees, where they watched each assault of the wind tearing at the little foliage that still remained. He guided her tenderly away from the sight of the house; and they walked along the broad path down through the shrubbery, meeting a rout of brown and red and yellow leaves that swept by them. She clung to Guy's arm as if this urgent and tumultuous wind had the power to sweep her, too, into the confusion; such an affraying journey was life beginning to seem. This ghastly elation of the October weather would not allow her breath to examine the perplexity in which she had involved herself. She felt that if the wind blew any louder she would have to scream out in defiance of its violence or else surrender miserably and be whirled into oblivion. A brown oak-leaf had escaped from the perishable host and was palpitating in a fold of her sleeve like a hunted creature; but when Pauline would have rescued it at the same moment a gust came roaring up the walk under the hissing trees, and the driven leaf was torn from its refuge and flung high into the air to join the myriads in their giddy riot of death.

"Come away from here," she cried to Guy. "Come away or I shall go mad in this wind."

He looked at her with a sort of judicial demeanor, as if he were in doubt whether he ought not to reprove such excitement.

"It was really beginning to blow quite fiercely," he said, when they had reached the comparative stillness of Abbey Lane.

Behind them Pauline still heard with terror and hatred the moaning of the trees, and she hurried away from the sound.

"Never, never will I go there again. Why did you ask me to go there? I would sooner have met a thousand Brydones than have been in that house."

"Pauline," he protested, "you really do sometimes encourage yourself to be overwrought."

"Guy, don't lecture me," she said, turning upon him fiercely.

"Well, don't let the whole of Wychford see that you're in a temper," he retorted. "People haven't yet got over the idea of us two as a natural curiosity of the neighborhood. I don't want ... and I don't suppose you're very anxious for these yokels to discuss our quarrels in the post-office to-night?"

"I don't mind what anybody does," said Pauline, desperately. "I only want to be out of this wind—this wind."

She was rather glad that Guy, perhaps to punish her for the loss of control, said he must go and work instead of coming back to tea at the Rectory. It strangely gave her the ability to smile at him and be in their parting herself again, whereas had he come back with her she knew that she would still have felt irritated. Her smile may have abashed his ill-humor, for he seemed inclined to change his mind about the need for work; but she would not let him, and hurried towards home at the back of the west wind. Should she ask her sisters if they had seen her in the Abbey? It would be better to wait until they said something first. It would really be best to say nothing about this afternoon. Tea was in the nursery that day, for the Rector was holding some sort of colloquy in the drawing-room, which he always used for parochial business, because he dreaded having his seeds scattered by the awkward fingers of the flock.

Tea had not come in yet, and Pauline took her familiar seat in the window, glad to be out of the wind, but pondering a little mournfully the lawn mottled with leaves, and the lily-pond that was being seamed and crinkled by every gust that skated across the surface. When the others arrived Pauline knew that she turned round to greet them defiantly, although she would have given much not to feel excuseful like this.

"You didn't see Monica and me?" Margaret asked.

"Only after you'd gone too far for us to call to you," Pauline answered, nervously assuring herself that Margaret had not tried to "catch her out," as Janet would have said.

"We had taken the short cut through the Abbey," Monica explained.

Pauline felt that what Monica had meant to say was: "We did not spy upon you deliberately." And that she should have had this instinct of putting her sisters in the wrong prepared her for something unpleasant, that and the fuss her mother was making over the tea-tray. Pauline was more than ever grateful to the impulse which had not allowed Guy to change his mind and come back with her. As soon as tea was over Margaret and Monica went away to practise a duet; and in the manner of their going from the room Pauline felt the louring of the atmosphere.

Her mother began at once:

"Pauline, I'm surprised at your going into the Abbey with Guy."

"Well, it was really an accident. I mean it was because we wanted not to meet any of the Brydones, who were rushing at us from every side."

Pauline tried to laugh, but her mother looked down at the milk-jug and flushed nearly to crimson in the embarrassment of something she was forcing herself to say.

"It's not merely going into the Abbey ... no ... not merely that ... no, not merely going into the Abbey ... but to let Guy make love to you like that is so vulgar. Pauline, it's the sort of way that servants behave when they're in love."

She sprang from the window-seat.

"Mother, what do you mean?"

"Margaret and Monica saw you sitting on Guy's knee. In any case I would rather you never did that. In any case ... yes ... but in a place where people passing might have seen ... yes, would have seen ... oh, it was inexcusable. I shall have to make much stricter rules...."

"Are you going to speak to Guy about this?" Pauline asked. The house seemed to be whirling away like a leaf, such a shattering of her love were these words of her mother.

"How can I speak to Guy about it?" Mrs. Grey demanded, irritably. "How can I, Pauline? It has nearly choked me to speak to you."

"I think Monica and Margaret are almost wicked!" Pauline cried in flames. "They are trying to destroy everything. They are, they are. No, Mother, you sha'n't defend them. I knew they felt guilty when they went out of the room like that. How dare they put horrible thoughts in your mind? How dare they? They're cruel to me. And you're cruel to me. I don't understand what's happening to everybody. You'll make me hate you all, if you speak like that!"

She rushed from the nursery and went first to the music-room, where Margaret was sounding deep notes, hanging over her violoncello, and where Monica was playing one of those contained, somewhat frigid accompaniments.

"Margaret and Monica," said Pauline, standing in the doorway, "you're never to dare to speak about me to Mother as you must have spoken this afternoon. Because neither of you has any emotion but conceit and selfishness, you shall not be jealous of Guy and me. Margaret, you can have no heart. I shall write to Richard and tell him you're heartless. Don't smile down at your violoncello. You shall not rule me into being like yourself. Oh, I'll never play music with either of you again!"

Then she left them, and in her white room for an hour she listened hopelessly to the trolling wind.