Out on the high-road a number of her guests whizzed past in one of Scott’s motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, and the car was gone in a whirl of dust.  She stood in the road watching it recede, then walked forward again toward the house.

Her accustomed elasticity appeared to have left her; the sun was becoming oppressive; her white-shod feet dragged a little, which was so unusual that she straightened her head and shoulders with nervous abruptness.

“What on earth is the matter with me?” she said, half aloud, to herself.

During these last two months, and apparently apropos of nothing at all, an unaccustomed sense of depression sometimes crept upon her.

At first she disregarded it as the purely physical lassitude of spring, but now it was beginning to disquiet her.  Once a hazy suspicion took shape—­hastily dismissed—­that some sense, some temporarily suppressed desire was troubling her.  The same idea had awakened again that evening on the terrace when the faint odour from the decanter attracted her.  And again she suspected, and shrank away into herself, shocked, frightened, surprised, yet still defiantly incredulous.

Yet her suspicions had been correct.  It was habit, disturbed by the tardiness of accustomed tribute, that stirred at moments, demanding recognition.

Since that night in early spring when fear and horror of herself had suddenly checked a custom which she had hitherto supposed to be nothing worse than foolish, twice—­at times inadvertently, at times deliberately—­she had sought relief from sleepless nervousness and this new depression in the old and apparently harmless manner of her girlhood.  For weeks now she had exercised little control of herself, feeling immune, yet it scared her a little to recognise again in herself the restless premonitions of desire.  For here, in the sunshine of the forest-bordered highway, that same dull uneasiness was stirring once more.

It was true, other things had stirred her to uneasiness that morning—­an indefinable impression concerning Kathleen—­a definite one which concerned Rosalie Dysart and Duane, and which began to exasperate her.

All her elasticity was gone now; tired without reason, she plodded on along the road in her little white shoes, head bent, brown eyes brooding, striving to fix her wandering thoughts on Duane Mallett to fight down the threatening murmurs of a peril still scarcely comprehended.

“Anyway,” she said half aloud, “even if I ever could care for him, I dare not let myself do it with this absurd inclination always threatening me.”

She had said it!  Scarcely yet understanding the purport of her own words, yet electrified, glaringly enlightened by them, she halted.  A confused sense that something vital had occurred in her life stilled her heart and her breathing together.

After a moment she straightened up and walked forward, turned across the lawn and into the syringa-bordered drive.