“You see, we’re developing all this property now,” observed Arthur, in a gratified tone as they whirled past an old field intersected by a concrete walk which informed the curious that it was “Arlington Avenue.”  “Honeysuckle Lane has gone, too, and we’re grading a street there now in front of the old Berkeley place.”

“The growth has been wonderful,” said Gabriella, a little pensively; “but do you remember how lovely Honeysuckle Lane used to be?  That’s where we went for wild honeysuckle in the spring.”

“Oh, we’ll find plenty of honeysuckle farther out.  I gathered a big bunch of it for Cousin Nelly yesterday.”

For a while they sped on in silence.  Arthur was intent on the wheel, and Gabriella could think of nothing to say to him that she had not said in Jane’s drawing-room.  When at last they left the desolation of improvement, and came out into the natural country, the sun was already low, and the forest of pines along the glowing, horizon was like an impending storm.  Once Arthur stopped, and they got out to gather wild honeysuckle by the roadside; then with the sticky, heavily scented blossoms in her lap, they went on again toward the sunset, still silent, still separated by an impalpable barrier.  “He is just what I thought he would be,” she thought sadly.  “He is just where I left him eighteen years ago, and yet it is different.  In some inexplicable way it is different from what I expected.”  And she told herself that the fault was her own—­that she had changed, hardened, and become hopelessly matter-of-fact—­that she had lost her youth and her sentiment.

Suddenly, as if the action had been forced upon him by the steady pressure of some deep conviction, some inner necessity, Arthur turned his face toward her, and asked gently:  “Gabriella, do you ever think of the past?”

Facing the rosy sunset, his features looked wan and colourless, and she noticed again that he seemed to have dried through and through, like some rare fruit that has lain wrapped in tissue paper too long.

She looked at him with wistful and sombre eyes.  Now that the desired moment had come, she felt only that she would have given her whole future to escape before it overtook her, to avoid the inevitable, crowning hour of her destiny.

“I think of it very often,” she answered truthfully, while she buried her face in the intoxicating bloom of the honeysuckle.

“Do you remember my telling you once that I’d never give you up—­that I’d never stop caring?”

“Yes, I remember—­but, oh, Arthur, you mustn’t—­” She sat up with a start, gazing straight ahead into the rose and gold of the afterglow.  From the deserted road, winding flat and dun-coloured in the soft light, she heard another voice—­the strong and buoyant voice of O’Hara—­saying:  “I’m not the sort to change—­” and then over again, “I’m not the sort to change—­”

“I suppose it’s too late,” Arthur went on, with his patient tenderness.  “Things usually come too late for me or else I miss them altogether.  That’s been the way always—­and now—­” With his left hand he made a large, slow, commemorative gesture.