“If strong emotions are what one wants out of life,” commented Marise lightly, to Marsh, “one ought to be born a nervous little dog, given over to the whimsical tyranny of humans.”

“There are other ways of coming by strong emotions,” answered Marsh, not lightly at all.

“What in the world are wool-hetchels?” asked Mr. Welles as the grown-ups went along the hall towards the side-door.

“Why, when I was a girl, and we spun our own wool yarn . . .” began Cousin Hetty, trotting beside him and turning her old face up to his.

Marsh stopped short in the hall-way with a challenging abruptness that brought Marise to a standstill also.  The older people went on down the long dusky hail to the door and out into the garden, not noticing that the other two had stopped.  The door swung shut behind them.

* * * * *

Marise felt the man’s dark eyes on her, searching, determined.  They were far from those first days, she thought, when he had tacitly agreed not to look at her like that, very far from those first days of delicacy and lightness of touch.

With a determination as firm as his own, she made her face and eyes opaque, and said on a resolutely gay note, “What’s the matter?  Can’t you stand any more information about early times in Vermont?  You must have been having too heavy a dose of Mr. Bayweather.  But I like it, you know.  I find it awfully interesting to know so in detail about any past period of human life; as much so . . . why not? . . . as researches into which provinces of France used half-timber houses, and how late?”

“You like a great many things!” he said impatiently.

“We must get out into the garden with the others, or Cousin Hetty will be telling her old-time stories before we arrive,” she answered, moving towards the door.

She felt her pulse knocking loud and swift.  Strange how a casual interchange of words with him would excite and agitate her.  But it had been more than that.  Everything was, with him.

He gave the sidewise toss of his head, which had come to be so familiar to her, as though he were tossing a lock of hair from his forehead, but he said nothing more, following her down the long hall in silence.

It was as though she had physically felt the steel of his blade slide gratingly once more down from her parry.  Her mental attitude had been so entirely that of a fencer, on the alert, watchfully defensive against the quick-flashing attack of the opponent, that she had an instant’s absurd fear of letting him walk behind her, as though she might feel a thrust in the back.  “How ridiculous of me!” she told herself with an inward laugh of genuine amusement.  “Women are as bad as fox-terriers for inventing exciting occasions out of nothing at all.”

Then in a gust of deep anger, instantly come, instantly gone, “Why do I tolerate this for a moment?  I was perfectly all right before.  Why don’t I simply send him about his business, as I would any other bold meddler?”