She gave a start when she saw him appear with a great jostling of white branches, and made as if she would have fled; then she held up her head with gentle dignity and advanced, lifting her lady-skirts with dainty fingers on either side.  Mistress Dorothy, being weary of fine needle-work upon her bridal linen, had come out a little way to take the air, and naturally enough had chosen for her walk this sweet lane, which opened upon the highway a stone’s-throw below her house.

If Eugene Hautville, at sight of her, felt a quaking of his spirit, and would also fain have fled, he made no sign, but walked on proudly like a prince, with a bold yet graceful swing of his stalwart shoulders.  And when he and Dorothy met, he bowed low before her, and she courtesied and he bade her good-day quite clearly, and she murmured a response with pretty, prim lips; and they would have passed on had not both, as if constrained by hands of force upon their necks, raised their faces and looked of a sudden into each other eyes with that same old look which they had exchanged in the meeting-house long ago.

Dorothy Fair wore on that day a thin wool gown of a mottled blue color like a dapple of spring violets.  It was laid across her bosom in smooth plaits, and showed at the throat her finely wrought lace kerchief.  The sun was so warm that she had put on her white straw hat with blue ribbons, and her soft curls flowed from under it to her blue belt ribbon.  She wore, too, her little black-silk apron, cunningly worked in the corners with flowers in colored silks.  Dorothy looked up in Eugene Hautville’s face, and he looked down at her, for a force against which they had come into the world unarmed constrained them.  Then she bent her head before him until he could see nothing but the white slant of her hat, and caught at her silk apron as if she would hide her face with that also.

Eugene stood still looking at her, his face radiant and glowing red.  “Dorothy!” he stammered, and then Dorothy straightened herself suddenly, though she kept her face averted, flung up her head, caught up her blue skirts again, and made as if she would pass on without another word.  Eugene, with his face all at once white, and his head proudly raise, stood aside to let her pass. “’Tis a warm day for the season,” he said, with his old graceful courtesy.  But Dorothy looked up at him again as she neared him in passing, and her sweet mouth was quivering like a frightened baby’s, and the tears were in her blue eyes, and no man who loved her could have let her go by; and certainly not this fiery young Eugene.  Suddenly, and with seemingly no more involvement of wills or ethics than the alders in their blossoming, the two were in each other’s arms, and their lips were meeting in kisses.

This fair and demure daughter of Puritans might well, as she stood there in her lover’s embrace, being already, as she was, the betrothed bride of another, have been accounted fickle and false, but perhaps in a sense she was not.  Never had she forgot or been untrue to her first love-dreams, which Eugene had caused, but had held to them with that mild negative obstinacy of her nature which she could not herself overcome.  Now it was to her as if she were reconciled to her true lover, and was faithful instead of false; and less false she surely was to her own self.