If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it.

“I thought you couldn’t stand Silverdale much longer,” she replied.

“You know why I stayed,” he said, and paused again—­rather awkwardly for Mr. Spence.  But Honora was silent.  “I had a letter this morning from my partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back.”

“I suppose you are very busy,” said Honora, detaching a copper-green scale of moss from the boulder.

“The fact is,” he explained, “that we have received an order of considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible.  Something of a compliment—­since we are, after all, comparatively young men.”

“Sometimes,” said Honora, “sometimes I wish I were a man.  Women are so hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to them.  A man can do what he wants.  He can go into Wall Street and fight until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men.  That would be a career!”

“Yes,” he agreed, smilingly, “it’s worth fighting for.”

Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista of the wood road by which they had come.  He flung his cigarette into the water and took a step nearer her.

“How long have I known you?” he asked.

She started.

“Why, it’s only a little more than a week,” she said.

“Does it seem longer than that to you?”

“Yes,” admitted Honora, colouring; “I suppose it’s because we’ve been staying in the same house.”

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Spence, “that I have known you always.”

Honora sat very still.  It passed through her brain, without comment, that there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some other voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the same tone.

“You’re the kind of girl I admire,” he declared.  “I’ve been watching you—­more than you have any idea of.  You’re adaptable.  Put you down any place, and you take hold.  For instance, it’s a marvellous thing to me how you’ve handled all the curiosities up there this week.”

“Oh, I like people,” said Honora, “they interest me.”  And she laughed a little, nervously.  She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his own manner:  the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was changed by the new vibrations in his voice.  He was making love, too, with a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance.  She stole a glance at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs.  He did not, it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been called a thrill.  She had read somewhere that women were always expecting thrills, and never got them.  Nevertheless, she had not realized how close a bond of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden announcement of his going back to New York.  In a little while she too would be leaving for St. Louis.  The probability that she would never see him again seemed graver than she would have believed.