For the first time during the last ten years he had done a thing he had no intention of doing.

A temporary long-lost feeling of shyness had seized upon him as he saw Ruth coming out, tall and pale and graceful, from the shadow of the church porch into the blaze of the mid-day sunshine.

He had not calculated either for that sudden disconcerting leap of the heart as her eyes met his.

He had an idiotic feeling that she must be aware that he had run most of the way to church, and that he had contemplated the burnished circles of her back hair for two hours, without a glance at the fashionably scraped-up head-dress of Mabel Thursby, with its hogged mane of little wire curls in the nape of the neck.

He felt he still looked hot and dusty, though he had imagined he was quite cool the moment before.