The edge of sweetness to her look
tempered but did not blunt the keeness with which it pierced. This
quality of independent decision had always attracted him, and as he
watched her walking under the hanging garland of the wild grape, he
told himself in desperation that she was the only woman he had ever seen
whose infinite variety he could not exhaust. The mere recollection of
the others wearied him. Almost imperceptibly he was beginning to feel
a distaste for the side of life which had once offered so rich an
allurement to his senses. The idea that this might be love, after all,
had occurred to him more than once during the past six months, and he
met the suggestion with the invariable cynical retort that "he hadn't it
in him." Yet only ten minutes before, he had watched Molly coming to him
over the jewelled landscape, and the heavens had opened. Once more the
unattainable had appeared to him wrapped in the myriad-coloured veil of
his young illusions.
"Molly," he said almost in spite of himself, "what would have happened
to us if we had met five or six years ago?"
"Nothing, probably."
"Well, I'm not so sure--not if you like me half as well as I like you.
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