And Mary danced.  With Graham when she must, with Rush when she could.  The latter happened oftener than you would have supposed.

“Those Wollastons can certainly dance,” Sylvia remarked to her brother.  “I wonder they’ll have anything to do with us.  Let’s just watch them for a minute.—­Here, we’ll turn the piano around so Mr. March can see, too.”

It was queer, Mary reflected, how easy it was for her and also, she was sure, for her lover, to acquiesce in a spending of the hours like that; how little impatient she was of the presence of these others that kept them apart.  She gave no thought to any maneuver, practicable or fantastic, for stealing away with him, not even when, as the party broke up for the night it became evident that chance was not going so to favor them.

She realized afterward that there had been something factitious about her tranquillity.  What he had said in the moment before their first embrace had been on that same note.  He had been afraid to touch her for fear that—­as in a fairy story, or a dream,—­she wouldn’t be there.  All that afternoon and evening, despite an ineffable security in their miracle, she had walked softly and so far as the future was concerned, avoided trying to look.

Something in his gaze when he said good night to her, gave her a momentary foreboding, though she told herself on the way up to the tent she was to share with Sylvia that this was nothing but the scare that always comes along with a too complete happiness.

But in the morning when her aunt told her that March had gone, she realized that it had been more than that.

It was in the presence of the others who had gathered in the apple house for breakfast that she heard the news, and this was perhaps a mercy; for the effort she had to make to keep from betraying herself rallied her forces and prevented a rout.

To the others his having gone like that seemed natural enough,—­likably characteristic of him, at any rate.  In his note to Miss Wollaston he had merely said that he realized that he must be off and wished to make the most of the cool of the morning.  He hoped she would understand and pardon his not having spoken of his intention last night.

“It’s the crush Sylvia had on him that accounts for that,” Graham observed.  “He was afraid of the row she’d make if he let on.”

Sylvia’s riposte to this was the speculation that Mary had scared him away, but one could see that her brother’s explanation pleased her.

“Anyhow,” she concluded, “he was good while he lasted.”

What held Mary together was the obvious fact that none of them saw—­no more than they had seen—­anything.  Not one curious or questioning glance was turned her way.  A sense she was not until later able to find words for, that she was guarding something, his quite as much as her own, from profaning eyes, gave her the resolution it needed to carry on like that until she could be alone.  Naturally,—­or at all events plausibly—­alone.  She wouldn’t run away from anybody.