His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch with Julius Gershom.

Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square.

She was talking eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked.

Her face was like a pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming archness that he had imagined so vividly.

If she saw him, she made no sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his neglect of the past two or three weeks?
But even then, accepting that charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of Gershom?
Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of Gershom?
The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches overhead.
In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings..