fountain, and go swiftly out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square.  She was talking eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked.  Her face was like a pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming archness that he had imagined so vividly.  If she saw him, she made no sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his neglect of the past two or three weeks?  But even then, accepting that charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of Gershom?  Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of Gershom?

The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches overhead.

In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings.

CHAPTER XVII

MRS. GREEN

As Patty went by so quickly, she saw Stephen without appearing to glance in his direction.  For the last few weeks a flame had run over her whenever she remembered, and there was scarcely a moment when it was out of her mind, that she had shown her heart so openly and that, as she expressed it bitterly, “he had hidden behind his mother.”  “If he comes back again,” she told herself recklessly, and she felt scorched when she thought that he might never come back, “I’ll let him see that I can trifle as well as, or better, than he can.  I’ll let him see that two can play at that kind of game.”  A hundred times Corinna’s warning returned to her.  The words, which had made so slight an impression when she heard them, were burned now into her memory.  Oh, Mrs. Page had known all along what it meant!  She had understood from the beginning; and she had tried, without hurting her, to make her see the blind folly of such an infatuation.  As she thought of this to-day, Patty’s heart ached with injured pride and resentment, not only against Stephen, but against the unfairness of life.  Why was it that men and circumstances would never let one be natural and generous?  Was there a conspiracy of events, as Mrs. Page had once said, to prevent the finest impulses from coming to flower?  “I’d have done anything on earth for him,” thought the girl with passionate indignation.  “I’d have made any sacrifice.  I could have been anything that he wanted.”  And she felt bitterly that the best in her soul, the sacred places of her life had been invaded and destroyed.  The blighted sensation which accompanies the recoil of an emotion