a sudden intimacy after a day spent in the open, for beginning real
life, as it would have to be lived, once more. The three men stayed
behind to gather the remnants of the picnic, but the girls lifted their
pale skirts about them and were gone over the high stone stile like
moths.




CHAPTER XIII

THE STILE


That evening as supper was being eaten in the new dining-room at
Cloom--a merry supper enough, for all Annie's skeleton presence at one
end of the table--Archelaus walked in. It was the first time he had been
over to Cloom since the night of the bush-beating, and it was the first
time Ishmael had seen him since that glimpse in the light of a lantern
in the wood.

Ishmael looked at his brother, and all that affair seemed very long ago,
in a life when he had not been to London, mixed with men, or met
Blanche. He held out a hand to Archelaus, who for a stupid moment stood
staring at it; then he saw the stranger girl from London, Ishmael's
girl, of whom he had heard, watching him. Beyond her sat Phoebe. Some
train of thought was lit in Archelaus's mind, and burned there; the
second of hesitation during which his survey and the thought took place
within his mind was imperceptible as he awkwardly struck his big fist
into Ishmael's palm. Everyone present was aware, in greater or less