Each called to the other as if over an abyss of years and time.
Then Pauline said she must go back, but Guy reminded her of a book she had promised to read, and begged her just to come with him to the library.
"I do want to talk to you once alone in my own room," he said. "The evenings won't seem so empty when I can think of you there."
She could not disappoint him, and they went up-stairs and into his green room that smelt of tobacco smoke and meadowsweet. They stood by the window looking out over their territory, and Guy told for the hundredth time how, as it were, straight from this window he had plunged to meet her that September night.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed, suddenly, reading on the pane that was scrabbled with mottoes cut by himself in idle moments with the glazier's pencil:
The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land.
Michael Fane. June 24.
"That's to-day! Then Michael must be here. What an extraordinary thing!"
Guy looked round the room for any sign of his friend; but there was nothing except the Shakespearian record of his presence. Pauline felt hurt that he should be so much interested in a friend when but a moment ago he had brought her here as if her presence were the only thing that counted for his evening's pleasure.
"I must find out where he is," exclaimed Guy.
Now he wanted to be rid of her, thought Pauline, and for the first time, when he had kissed her, she kissed him coldly in response. More bitter still was the thought that he did not remonstrate; he had not noticed. Pauline said she must hurry away, and Guy did not persuade her to stop. Oh, how she hated this friend of his! She had no one in whom she would be even mildly interested when she was with Guy. He took her home in the canoe, speculating all the way about Michael Fane's whereabouts; and as Pauline went across the Rectory paddock there were tears of mortification in her eyes that sometimes burnt as hotly even as with jealousy's rage.