It was curious about his goddess.  She seemed to grow more beautiful every time that he saw her.  Perhaps it was her native air that gave her that charming flush; perhaps it was the joy of being at home again; perhaps it was—­no, he didn’t dare to hope that.  Not yet.  Not even with all that she had done for him fresh in his memory.  The humility of true love was so heavy on his heart that his very dreams were dulled with hopelessness, the majority of them seeming too vividly dyed in Paradise hues for their fulfillment in daily life to ever appear possible.  But still he was very, very happy to be there with her—­beside her—­and to hear her voice and look into her eyes whenever the trouble some “other people” would leave them alone together.  And she did seem happy, too.  And so rejoiced that the tide of Aunt Mary’s wrath had been successfully turned.  And so rejoiced that he was at work, even in the face of her hopes as to his college career.  And also so rejoiced to take up the gay, careless thread of their mutual pleasure again.

The morning after the gathering of the party was Saturday and an ideal day—­that sort of ideal day when house parties naturally sift into pairs and then fade away altogether.  The country surrounding our particular party was densely wooded and not at all settled, the woods were laid out in a fascinating system of walks and benches which in no case commanded views of one another, and the shade overhead was the shade of July and as propitious to rest as it was to motion.  Mitchell took a girl in gray and two sets of golf clubs and started out in the opposite direction from the links, Clover took a girl in green and a camera and went another way, Burnett took a girl in a riding habit and two saddle horses and followed the horses’ noses whither they led, and Jack—­Jack smoked cigarettes on the piazza and waited—­waited.

Mrs. Rosscott came out after a while and asked him why he didn’t go to walk also.

“Just what I was thinking as to yourself,” he said, very boldly as to voice, and very beseechingly as to eyes.

“Oh, I’m so busy,” she said, laughing up into his eyes and then laughing down at the ground—­“you see I’m the only married daughter to help mamma.”

“But you’ve been helping all the morning,” he complained, “and besides how can you help?  One would think that your mother was beating eggs or turning mattresses.”

“I have to work harder than that,” said Mrs. Rosscott; “I have to make people know one another and like one another and not all want to make love to the same girl.”

“You can’t help their all wanting to make love to the same girl,” said Jack; “the more you try to convince them of their folly the deeper in love they are bound to fall.  I’m an illustration of that myself.”

Mrs. Rosscott looked at him then and curved her mouth sweetly.

“You do say such pretty things,” she said.  “I don’t see how you’ve learned so much in so little time.  Why, General Jiggs in there is three times your age and he tangles himself awfully when he tries to be sweet.”