the stage to speak their lines. With Don, the acting was not unconscious; he was well aware that he was not voicing the tumult of his heart. But with her, the inner working of her thought was in the more complicated spirit of a mild flirtation. She knew that she was playing with fire, for the first flame in Don's eyes, that morning, had frightened her; but he had hidden it now, though she knew it was still there; and while, in her words, she refused to recognise it, she fed it with glances, with smiles, with little dimpling blushes, warmed and excited by it, girlishly.
She asked him what he had been doing at college; and he told her what lectures he had been taking and what subjects he preferred. She asked him how he had spent his Christmas; and he replied with report of the friends whom she had left in Coulton and of the small events of the town. They made no reference to that past which included his love-letter and its result. He said nothing of his constant thought of her, nothing of his revolt against the dictation of his father, nothing of his inner life at all. He kept their conversation on the easy plane of friendly chatter; and when she brushed against his shoulder, in a narrowing of the path, he did not speak until the choke of emotion had died down again in his throat.
She liked skating better than tobogganing; he had done very little of either. She recalled with enthusiasm a "bobbing" party which the girls had had at Horton, last winter, on a moonlit night; and he laughed at her description of how she had blown a
