Esther sat down again.  She felt numb.  She closed her eyes as she had done before.  But all the dreams, all the happy thoughts were gone.  She opened them abruptly to find Aunt Amy staring down upon her, dumbly, wringing her hands.  In the warm summer air the girl shivered.

“What is it?” she asked a little sharply.  But Aunt Amy seemed neither to see nor hear her.  She flitted by like some wandering grey moth into the dim garden, still wringing her hands.

Esther sat up.  “How utterly absurd,” she said aloud.  Indeed she felt heartily ashamed of herself.  To behave like a foolish child, to startle Aunt Amy into a fit and all because her mother and Dr. Callandar had gone for a stroll down the lilac walk—­the most natural thing in the world.  They would return presently.  She had only to wait.  But the waiting was not quite the same.  Those golden moments already sparkled in the past.  Nothing could ever be quite the same as if he had come straight up the path to where she waited for him in the dusk.

* * * * *

In the living-room, Jane who had small patience with twilight, had lighted the lamp.  Its shaded beams fell in golden bars across the veranda floor.  The sky was full of stars, now, but the voice of the breeze was growing shrill, as if whistling up the rain.

They were coming back along the side of the house.  Esther rose quickly and slipped into the safety of the commonplace with Jane and the lighted lamp.  Mrs. Coombe entered first, there was an instant to observe and wonder at her.  She seemed a different woman, young, pretty, sparkling; even her hair seemed brighter.  Behind her came Callandar and when Esther saw his face her heart seemed to stop.  It was the face, almost, of a man of middle age, a firm, quiet face with cold eyes.

“Esther!” Mrs. Coombe’s voice held incipient reproof.

The girl came forward and offered her hand.  The doctor, this new doctor, took it, let it drop and said, “Good evening, Miss Esther,” then turned to Jane with a politely worded message from Ann and Bubble.

“You can tell them I won’t go,” said Jane crossly.  “They think they are smart.  Just because—­”

Esther slipped quietly from the room.  In the hall outside she paused, breathless.  She felt as if she had run a long way.  Shame enveloped her, a shame whose cause she could not put into words.  She only knew that she had, in the few seconds of that cold greeting, been profoundly humiliated.  She quivered with the sting of unwarranted expectancy.  But if this had been all, it would have been well.  There was something else, some deeper pain surging through the smart of wounded pride, something which led her with blind steps into a dark corner of the stairs where she sat very quiet and still.

Through the open front door, she could see the bars of lamplight on the deserted veranda, and hear from the open windows of the living-room a hum of conversation in which Jane seemed to be taking a leading part.  Then came the tinkle of the old piano and Mary’s voice, singing, or attempting to sing, for it was soon apparent that her voice sagged pitifully on the high notes.