One may enjoy the perfume of a good action without
investigating the processes of its production.
In the middle of the afternoon she heard their arrival. It was a
pleasant thing to hear the sound of men's voices and laughter, and
all that cheerful confusion, which as surely follows their advent as
thunder follows lightning. And Phyllis found it very pleasant to lie
still and think of the past, and put off, just for an hour or two,
whatever of joy or sorrow was coming to meet her; for she had not seen
John for two years. He might have ceased to love her. He might be so
changed that she would not dare to love him. But in the main she
thought hopefully. True love, like true faith, when there seems to,
be nothing at all to rest upon,
"Treads on the void and finds
The rock beneath."
Few women will blame Phyllis for being unusually careful about her
toilet, and for going down stairs with a little tremor at her heart.
Even when she could hear Richard and John talking, she still delayed
the moment she had been longing for. She walked into the dining-room,
looked at the boy setting the table, and altered the arrangement of
the flowers. She looked into the parlor, raised a curtain, and opened
the piano, and then, half ashamed of her self-consciousness, went to
the front piazza, where the young men were sitting.
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