in the buttonhole of his lapel, he had a little bunch of violets.
A girlish letter from her awaited him on his return to the house; but it was as formal as a schoolroom composition, in spite of its "Dear Don" and its "Your loving friend, Margaret Richardson." It was perfumed faintly, and that made him gulp; but when he had once put it in the little box in which he kept a dried starfish and a bit of broken agate and some other boyish treasures, he did not return to it. His cousin whistled from the lawn while he was at dinner; he pleaded that he had to prepare his Monday's lessons, and as soon as Conroy had gone, he hurried away to his tryst, with his Odyssey in his pocket—and also a penknife with which he was to cut new branches for her seat under the firs.
He came like a sleep-walker to the fallen pine on which they had sat together, and he stopped, smiling, as if it were a barrier in his way. Dexter leaped over it and went on. He looked after the dog, swaying irresolutely. Suddenly he sat down.
His face had turned pale. A look of pain slowly wrinkled around his eyes. Without moving his head, he lifted his hand to his knee, and his fingers trembled and twitched in a sort of empty groping. He turned—and the blood rushed to his face, and his eyes shut, and his mouth gasped open—and he slipped to his knees on the grass and sank down in it with a sob.
And if he did not understand then, it was because the heart-hunger, the ache of longing, the fever of loneliness that seized and shook and burned in him, was like the blow of a grief that stuns.
