were being registered on a mind free till now of all such impressions
and tenacious as a child's. Small wonder that as the days drifted past
Ishmael felt that he, too, was drifting on a tide of golden waters to
some shore of promise in a golden dawn.

Blanche, too, was slipping into something like love these days; the
beauty of their surroundings and something simple and primitive in the
boy himself both made the same appeal to her. Was it possible that after
all her flirtations, all her insincerities, she should capture the
birthright of the single-hearted? It seemed so, for Blanche had this
much of grace left--she was responsive to simplicity. There was
something more than the instinct of the coquette in the fullness with
which she gave him all he asked, step by step; she had thrown away
calculation and was letting herself be guided by her own instinct and
the finer instinct she felt to be in him. Each demand his moods made on
her she met, each thing his reverent hand unconsciously asked of hers as
he helped her over the rough places, each expression his eyes looked for
in hers--she gave them all. For here was that rarest of rare things, a
man to whom all could be given without his prizing less highly gift or
giver.

Long after she had gone to bed he would walk the fields and make sweet
picture-plans, all centred tenderly round her. He would stand and look
up at her window when the light in it was out, picturing the room, the
freshness, the delightful girlishness of it, and at this intimacy of
thought he would redden in the dark. His sense of humour was in
abeyance, and the reality, could he have seen it, would have been a
shock to him--the dressing-table a litter of cosmetics and pin-curls;
and on the pillow the face of Blanche surrounded by wavers and shiny
with cold-cream.