I knew there was something. Between friends it doesn't
matter, does it?"
Ashurst answered:
"Between friends--and we are, aren't we?"
She looked up at him, nodded vehemently, and her upper teeth gleamed
again in that swift, brilliant smile.
Three days later he went back to London, travelling with the Hallidays.
He had not written to the farm. What was there he could say?
On the last day of April in the following year he and Stella were
married....
Such were Ashurst's memories, sitting against the wall among the gorse,
on his silver-wedding day. At this very spot, where he had laid out the
lunch, Megan must have stood outlined against the sky when he had first
caught sight of her. Of all queer coincidences! And there moved in him
a longing to go down and see again the farm and the orchard, and the
meadow of the gipsy bogle. It would not take long; Stella would be an
hour yet, perhaps.
How well he remembered it all--the little crowning group of pine trees,
the steep-up grass hill behind! He paused at the farm gate. The low
stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants--not changed
a bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass under the
window, where he had reached up to her that night to take the key.
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