“Why, Tim, it’s you, is it?” said Peter.  “He’s the janitor of our building down town,” he explained to Honora, who had remained a silent witness to this simple scene.  She had been, in spite of herself, impressed by it, and by the mingled respect and affection in the janitor’s manner towards Peter.  It was so with every one to whom he spoke.  They walked on in silence for a few moments, into a path leading to a lake, which had stolen the flaming green-gold of the sky.

“I suppose,” said Honora, slowly, “it would be better for me to wish to be contented where I am, as you are.  But it’s no use trying, I can’t.”

Peter was not a preacher.

“Oh,” he said, “there are lots of things I want.”

“What?” demanded Honora, interested.  For she had never conceived of him as having any desires whatever.

“I want a house like Mr. Dwyer’s,” he declared, pointing at the distant imposing roof line against the fading eastern sky.

Honora laughed.  The idea of Peter wishing such a house was indeed ridiculous.  Then she became grave again.

“There are times when you seem to forget that I have at last grown up, Peter.  You never will talk over serious things with me.”

“What are serious things?” asked Peter.

“Well,” said Honora vaguely, “ambitions, and what one is going to make of themselves in life.  And then you make fun of me by saying you want Mr. Dwyer’s house.”  She laughed again.  “I can’t imagine you in that house!”

“Why not?” he asked, stopping beside the pond and thrusting his hands in his pockets.  He looked very solemn, but she knew he was smiling inwardly.

“Why—­because I can’t,” she said, and hesitated.  The question had forced her to think about Peter.  “I can’t imagine you living all alone in all that luxury.  It isn’t like you.”

“Why I all alone?” asked Peter.

“Don’t—­Don’t be ridiculous,” she said; “you wouldn’t build a house like that, even if you were twice as rich as Mr. Dwyer.  You know you wouldn’t.  And you’re not the marrying kind,” she added, with the superior knowledge of eighteen.

“I’m waiting for you, Honora,” he announced.

“You know I love you, Peter,”—­so she tempered her reply, for Honora’s feelings were tender.  What man, even Peter, would not have married her if he could?  Of course he was in earnest, despite his bantering tone, “but I never could—­marry you.”

“Not even if I were to offer you a house like Mr. Dwyer’s?” he said.  A remark which betrayed—­although not to her—­his knowledge of certain earthly strains in his goddess.

The colours faded from the water, and it blackened.

As they walked on side by side in the twilight, a consciousness of repressed masculine force, of reserve power, which she had never before felt about Peter Erwin, invaded her; and she was seized with a strange uneasiness.  Ridiculous was the thought (which she lost no time in rejecting) that pointed out the true road to happiness in marrying such a man as he.  In the gathering darkness she slipped her hand through his arm.