Granville quivered a little and shrank as a dog might under a blow.  He saw this dainty girl-shape floating along at his side in a flutter of wonderful draperies, one hand holding up her skirts with maddening revelations of whiteness.  If a lily could hold up her petals out of the dust she might do it in the same fashion as Ellen held her skirts, with no coarse clutching nor crumpling, not immodestly, but rather with disclosures of modesty itself.  Ellen’s wonderful daintiness was one of her chief charms.  There was an immaculateness about her attire and her every motion which seemed to extend to her very soul, and hedged her about with the lure of unapproachableness.  It was more that than her beauty which roused the imagination and quickened the pulses of a young man regarding her.

Granville Joy did not feel the earth beneath his feet as he walked with Ellen.  The scent of the sweet-peas came in his face, he heard the soft rustle of Ellen’s skirts and his own heart-beats.  She was very silent, since she did not wish him to go with her, though she was all the time reproaching herself for it.  Granville kept casting about for something to say which should ingratiate him with her.  He was resolved to say nothing of love to her.

“It is a beautiful night,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” agreed Ellen, and she looked at the moon.  She felt the boy’s burning, timid, worshipful eyes on her face.  She trembled, and yet she was angry and annoyed.  She felt in an undefined fashion that she herself was the summer night and the flowers and the crescent moon, and all that was fair and beautiful in the whole world to this other soul, and shame seized her instead of pride.  He seemed to force her to a sight of her own pettiness, as is always the case when love is not fully returned.  She made an impatient motion with the shoulder next Granville, and walked faster.

“You said you were going to Miss Lennox’s,” he remarked, anxiously, feeling that in some way he had displeased her.

“Yes, to carry her some sweet-peas.”

“She must have been real good-looking when she was young,” Granville said, injudiciously.

“When she was young,” retorted Ellen, angrily.  “She is beautiful now.  There is not another woman in Rowe as beautiful as she is.”

“Well, she is good-looking enough,” agreed Granville, with unreasoning jealousy.  He had not heard of Ellen’s good fortune.  His mother had not told him.  She was a tenderly sentimental woman, and had always had her fancies with regard to her son and Ellen Brewster.  When she heard the news she reflected that it would perhaps remove the girl from her boy immeasurably, that he would be pained, so she said nothing.  Every night when he came home she had watched his face to see if he had heard.

Now Ellen told him.  “You know what Miss Cynthia Lennox is going to do for me,” she said, abruptly, almost boastfully, she was so eager in her partisanship of Cynthia.