Anderson, walking along the shadowy street with Charlotte’s little hand in his arm, would have been oblivious to much more startling demonstrations than poor Eddy’s.  He was profoundly agitated, stirred to the depths, and for that very reason he acquitted himself with more dignity and quiet calm than usual.  He held himself with such a tight rein that his soul ached, but he never relaxed his hold.  He told himself that it would be monstrous if by a word or gesture, by a tone of the voice, he betrayed anything to this little, innocent, timid, frightened girl on his arm.  He never dreamed of the remotest possibility of dreams on her part.  The soul beside him, seemingly separated only by thin walls of flesh, was in reality separated by an abyss of the imagination.  But every minute his heart seemed to encompass her more and more tenderly, seemed to enfold her, shielding her from itself with its own love.  Now and then he looked down at her, and the sight of the little, pale, flower-like face turned towards his with a serious, guileless scrutiny, like a baby’s, caused him to fairly tremble with his passion of protection and adoration.  They talked very little.  Charlotte, if the truth were told, in spite of the tender nursing she had received, was still feeling rather shaken, and she had also a curious sense of timid and excited happiness, which tied her tongue and wove her thoughts even into an incoherent dazzle.  When Anderson spoke, it was very coolly, on quite indifferent topics, and Charlotte answered him in her soft, rather unsteady little voice, and then conversation lagged again.  It was on Anderson’s tongue to question her closely as to her entire recovery from her fright of the afternoon, but he did not even do that, being afraid to trust his voice.

As they drew near the Carroll house, a doubt and perplexity which had been haunting Charlotte, assumed larger proportions, and Anderson himself had a thought also of the complication.  Charlotte was wondering if she should ask him in.  She was wondering what her mother and aunt would think.  She knew what they would do, of course—­that is, so far as their reception of the man who had befriended her, and whose mother had befriended her was concerned.  They were gentlewomen.  And she knew quite certainly about her father.  But she wondered as to their real attitude, their mental attitude, and she wondered still more with regard to Anderson.  Would he expect to be invited in?  In what fashion did he read his own social status in the village.  Anderson also was considering, during the last of the way, if he should enter the Carroll house and present his apologies and his mother’s for having urged the fugitive members of the family to remain, and he wondered a good deal as to the desirable course for him to adopt, even supposing he were invited.  While he had no consciousness whatever of any loss of prestige among people whom he had always known in the village, while, in fact, he never gave it a