"I haven't forgotten, Note. But it can't be the same again, as man and woman, with what you are, and what I am."
"Better! O Vesty!"—he stood quite on a level with her now; she was glad of that. She was a tall girl, taller than he when they parted. "O Vesty!" he drank in her beauty with an awe that uplifted her in his frank, bright gaze—"God was happy when He made you!"
But the girl's eyes only searched his with a Basin gravity, for faith.
A fatal step, searching in Notely's eyes! A beautiful pallor crept over her face, flushing into joy. She ran her hand through his rough, light hair in the old way.
"It has not changed you, being at the schools so long, as I thought it would," she said wistfully, stroking his hair with mature gentleness, though he was older than she. "Why, Note; you look just as brown, and hearty, and masterful as ever!"
"Oh, but it wasn't book-schools I went to, you know. It was rowing and foot-ball and taking six bars on the running leap, and swinging from the feet with the head downward, and all that. I can do it all."
He looked away from her with mischief in his eyes, and hummed a line through his fine Greek nose, as Captain Pharo might.
"I don't doubt it, but you were high in the college too—for Lunette saw it in a paper: so high it was spoken of!"
"I just asked them to do that, Vesty. People can't refuse me, you know. I get whatever I ask for."
He turned to her with a sort of childish pathos on his strong, handsome face.