XXIX
It was with real regret the following morning that Huntington watched his ball drop into the cup on the eighteenth green. The round had been too perfect, the experience too enjoyable to come to an end so soon.
"Five down," Merry remarked. "That looks to me like a real defeat."
"I'm glad to find some game I can play better than you," Huntington replied banteringly. "I'm still sore over our swimming-races in Bermuda. But in all fairness I must admit that this course is built for a man's game, and the premium on the length of the wooden clubs was all that saved me to-day."
"You are generous,—but I acknowledge my defeat. Do we have to go home now?"
"There is at least an hour between us and the rigid convention of luncheon," Huntington answered. "Shall we spend it on the piazza?"
"It is much nicer beneath one of these great trees," she said, suiting her action to the word and sitting down upon the grass. "Come. Let us imagine that we're back in Bermuda again!"
Huntington seated himself beside her, still rebellious that their moments together were passing so swiftly. He had wondered how she would appear to him when he saw her again, half hoping to find that the charm of the earlier setting had exaggerated her attractiveness, half dreading an awakening. This would have simplified his problem, but it would also have robbed his life of the richness which had entered it. Even though he saw his course plainly plotted out for him, there was a delicious joy in knowing that there existed one who had awakened in him that which alone is best and without which no man's experience can be complete.
But his half-hope was not to be gratified nor his half-dread realized. The girl was different, but the intervening months had done their work well. She seemed older and more mature, yet this passing of the girl into womanhood had been accomplished without marring those characteristics which he had before admired. His eyes rested on her face longer than he realized, as these thoughts passed through his mind, but until she spoke he had no idea that she had noticed the closeness of his scrutiny.