“Good-bye, and God bless you, old boy,” he was saying.  Susan, in view of the occasion, had allowed him a little more champagne than usual—­enough to betray his feelings, and I knew that these had not changed since our college days.  I resolved to see more of him.  I had neglected him and undervalued his loyalty....  He had followed me to my room in George’s house where I was dressing for the journey, and he gave it as his deliberate judgment that in Maude I had “struck gold.”

“She’s just the girl for you, Hughie,” he declared.  “Susan thinks so, too.”

Later in the afternoon, as we sat in the state-room of the car that was bearing us eastward, Maude began to cry.  I sat looking at her helplessly, unable to enter into her emotion, resenting it a little.  Yet I tried awkwardly to comfort her.

“I can’t bear to leave them,” she said.

“But you will see them often, when we come back,” I reassured her.  It was scarcely the moment for reminding her of what she was getting in return.  This peculiar family affection she evinced was beyond me; I had never experienced it in any poignant degree since I had gone as a freshman to Harvard, and yet I was struck by the fact that her emotions were so rightly placed.  It was natural to love one’s family.  I began to feel, vaguely, as I watched her, that the new relationship into which I had entered was to be much more complicated than I had imagined.  Twilight was coming on, the train was winding through the mountain passes, crossing and re-crossing a swift little stream whose banks were massed with alder; here and there, on the steep hillsides, blazed the goldenrod....  Presently I turned, to surprise in her eyes a wide, questioning look,—­the look of a child.  Even in this irrevocable hour she sought to grasp what manner of being was this to whom she had confided her life, and with whom she was faring forth into the unknown.  The experience was utterly unlike my anticipation.  Yet I responded.  The kiss I gave her had no passion in it.

“I’ll take good care of you, Maude,” I said.

Suddenly, in the fading light, she flung her arms around me, pressing me tightly, desperately.

“Oh, I know you will, Hugh, dear.  And you’ll forgive me, won’t you, for being so horrid to-day, of all days?  I do love you!”

Neither of us had ever been abroad.  And although it was before the days of swimming-pools and gymnasiums and a la carte cafes on ocean liners, the Atlantic was imposing enough.  Maude had a more lasting capacity for pleasure than I, a keener enjoyment of new experiences, and as she lay beside me in the steamer-chair where I had carefully tucked her she would exclaim: 

“I simply can’t believe it, Hugh!  It seems so unreal.  I’m sure I shall wake up and find myself back in Elkington.”

“Don’t speak so loud, my dear,” I cautioned her.  There were some very formal-looking New Yorkers next us.

“No, I won’t,” she whispered.  “But I’m so happy I feel as though I should like to tell everyone.”