been just the spell even to the perceptions of
youth. There was the danger she frankly touched
it that such a temperament mightn't have ma
tured, with the years, all in the sense of fineness;
it was the sort of danger that, in renewing relations
after long breaks, one had always to look in the face.
To gather in strayed threads was to take a risk
for which, however, she was prepared if Milly was.
The possible " fun," she confessed, was by itself
rather tempting; and she fairly sounded, with this
wound up a little as she was the note of fun as
the harmless final right of fifty years of mere New
England virtue. Among the things she was after
wards to recall was the indescribable look dropped
on her, at this, by her companion; she was still
seated there between the candles and before the
finished supper, while Milly moved about, and the
look was long to figure for her as an inscrutable
comment on her notion of freedom. Challenged,
at any rate, as for the last wise word, Milly showed
perhaps, musingly, charmingly, that, though her
attention had been mainly soundless, her friend's
story produced as a resource unsuspected, a card
from up the sleeve half surprised, half beguiled
her. Since the matter, such as it was, depended on
that, she brought out, before she went to bed, an
easy, a light " Risk everything!"

This quality in it seemed possibly a little to deny
weight to Maud Lowder's evoked presence as
Susan Stringham, still sitting up, became, in excited

[[156]]

p155 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p156w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p157

v?