A perfectly unreasonable sense of being spied upon, of something stealthy about it all, flashed to her mind and was gone, leaving her grave and perplexed.

What a strange suspicion! What an infernal inference! What grotesque train of thought could have culminated in such a sinister idea! She moved slightly in her saddle to look at him, and for an instant fancied that there was something furtive in his eyes; only for an instant, for he quietly picked up the thread of conversation where she had dropped it, saying that it had been raining for the last ten minutes, and that they might as well turn their horses toward shelter.
"I don't mind the rain," she said; "there is a spring-like odour in it.
Don't you notice it ?" "Not particularly," he replied.
"I was miles away a moment ago," she said; "years away, I mean--a little girl again, with two stiff yellow braids, trying to pretend that a big arm-chair was my mother's lap and that I could hear her whispering to me.

And there I sat, on a day like this, listening, pretending, cuddled up tight, and looking out at the first rain of the year falling in the backyard.

There was an odour like this about it all.

Memory, they say, is largely a matter of nose!" She laughed, fearing that he might have thought her sentimental, already regretting the familiarity of thrusting such trivial and personal incidents upon his notice.