of Faery to slay monsters and rescue maids; and if she sometimes objected that this was not study, Don was able to assure her that Spenser was on his "English course"; and if, while he read, he was the Redcross Knight and she Una "on her palfrey slow," he did not tell her, and she did not guess.
It was all very innocent and friendly—though Don had some bewildering moments when his heart seemed to swell with a choked longing in his chest. Then, two days of wind and rain kept her in the house, where he could only speak with her under conditions of strained formality—for he was at the age when the usages of indoors are an oppression on the spirits—and their return to their haunts gave him the feeling for her which a bright-coloured toy had used to raise in him, a desire to fondle it and rub it against his cheek. When they sat to rest on a great pine—one that had been brought down by the wind in its branches and the rain in its roots—he put his arm around her to support her; she was tired. He spread her hand on his knee and compared his own brown and ink-stained fingers with hers that were dimpled at the knuckles and pink in the nails; and some older instinct woke in him, and he lifted her hand and kissed it. She answered the caress with a little pressure, and smiled absent-mindedly, a far-away look in her eyes.
"What'll you do when I go away?" she asked.
His heart was stifling him. "I don't know. Are you going away?"
"Mother says I must. She says I don't look well."
