Soon after Norbert turned to follow them, they came to the shady part of the street, where the town in summer was like a grove.  Detachments from the procession had already, here and there, turned in at the various gates.  Nobody, however, appeared to have gone in-doors, except for fans, armed with which immediately to return to rockers upon the shaded verandas.  As Miss Tabor and Joe went by, the rocking-chairs stopped; the fans poised, motionless; and perspiring old gentlemen, wiping their necks, paused in arrested attitudes.

Once Ariel smiled politely, not at Mr. Louden, and inclined her head twice, with the result that the latter, after thinking for a time of how gracefully she did it and how pretty the top of her hat was, became gradually conscious of a meaning in her action:  that she had bowed to some one across the street.  He lifted his hat, about four minutes late, and discovered Mamie Pike and Eugene, upon the opposite pavement, walking home from church together.  Joe changed color.

There, just over the way, was she who had been, in his first youth, the fairy child, the little princess playing in the palace yard, and always afterward his lady of dreams, his fair unreachable moon!  And Joe, seeing her to-day, changed color; that was all!  He had passed Mamie in the street only a week before, and she had seemed all that she had always seemed; to-day an incomprehensible and subtle change had befallen her—­a change so mystifying to him that for a moment he almost doubted that she was Mamie Pike.  It came to him with a breath-taking shock that her face lacked a certain vivacity of meaning; that its sweetness was perhaps too placid; that there would have been a deeper goodness in it had there been any hint of daring.  Astonishing questions assailed him, startled him:  could it be true that, after all, there might be some day too much of her?  Was her amber hair a little too—­fluffy?  Was something the matter with her dress?  Everything she wore had always seemed so beautiful.  Where had the exquisiteness of it gone?  For there was surely no exquisiteness about it now!  It was incredible that any one could so greatly alter in the few days elapsed since he had seen her.

Strange matters!  Mamie had never looked prettier.

At the sound of Ariel’s voice he emerged from the profundities of his psychic enigma with a leap.

“She is lovelier than ever, isn’t she?”

“Yes, indeed,” he answered, blankly.

“Would you still risk—­” she began, smiling, but, apparently thinking better of it, changed her question:  “What is the name of your dog, Mr. Louden?  You haven’t told me.”

“Oh, he’s just a yellow dog,” he evaded, unskilfully.

“Young man!” she said, sharply.

“Well,” he admitted, reluctantly, “I call him Speck for short.”

“And what for long?  I want to know his real name.”

“It’s mighty inappropriate, because we’re fond of each other,” said Joe, “but when I picked him up he was so yellow, and so thin, and so creeping, and so scared that I christened him `Respectability.’ "