“Come out here, you landlubber,” he cried to Tom, “and I’ll put grass seed on your back.  I think you called me a ‘dude’ a while ago.  Come along and cut your capers.”

Tom understood the invitation and accepted it with delight.  Three times they wrestled on the grass, “side holds,” even as the giants of the mat.  And twice was Tom forced to bite grass at the hands of the distinguished lawyer.  Dishevelled, panting, each still boasting of his own prowess, they stumbled back to the porch.  Millie cast a pert reflection upon the qualities of a city brother.  In an instant Robert had secured a horrid katydid in his fingers and bore down upon her.  Screaming wildly, she fled up the lane, pursued by the avenging glass of form.  A quarter of a mile and they returned, she full of apology to the victorious “dude.”  The rustic mania possessed him unabatedly.

“I can do up a cowpenful of you slow hayseeds,” he proclaimed, vaingloriously.  “Bring on your bulldogs, your hired men and your log-rollers.”

He turned handsprings on the grass that prodded Tom to envious sarcasm.  And then, with a whoop, he clattered to the rear and brought back Uncle Ike, a battered colored retainer of the family, with his banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced “Chicken in the Bread Tray” and did buck-and-wing wonders for half an hour longer.  Incredibly, wild and boisterous things he did.  He sang, he told stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the yokel, the humorous clodhopper; he was mad, mad with the revival of the old life in his blood.

He became so extravagant that once his mother sought gently to reprove him.  Then Alicia moved as though she were about to speak, but she did not.  Through it all she sat immovable, a slim, white spirit in the dusk that no man might question or read.

By and by she asked permission to ascend to her room, saying that she was tired.  On her way she passed Robert.  He was standing in the door, the figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened face and unpardonable confusion of attire—­no trace there of the immaculate Robert Walmsley, the courted clubman and ornament of select circles.  He was doing a conjuring trick with some household utensils, and the family, now won over to him without exception, was beholding him with worshipful admiration.

As Alicia passed in Robert started suddenly.  He had forgotten for the moment that she was present.  Without a glance at him she went on upstairs.

After that the fun grew quiet.  An hour passed in talk, and then Robert went up himself.

She was standing by the window when he entered their room.  She was still clothed as when they were on the porch.  Outside and crowding against the window was a giant apple tree, full blossomed.

Robert sighed and went near the window.  He was ready to meet his fate.  A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape of that whiteclad form.  He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool would draw.  He was a peasant gambolling indecorously in the valley, and the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn could not but frown on him.  He had been unmasked by his own actions.  All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze.  Dully he awaited the approaching condemnation.