Instead of going to see her, he had gone riding with Maud Hemingway, who lived near his uncle's, in an old Colonial house which had belonged to her great-grandfather.

The girl was a good comrade, so good a comrade that she shunted, as it were, love with flings of ready speech and friendly greeting, and tennis-rackets and riding-whips and foils.

Robert had been teaching Maud to fence, and she had fenced too well.

Still, Robert had said to himself that he might some day fall in love with her and marry her.

He charged his memory with the fact that this was a much more rational course than visiting a girl like Ellen Brewster, so he stayed away in spite of involuntary turnings of his thoughts in that direction.