And he knew that he really was a little cross with Frances Pickering; he didn't care to carry flirtation as far as kissing.
Althea, however, was nowhere to be found.

He looked in the house, heard that she had been there but had gone out again; he looked in the garden; he finally went back to the woods, an uncomfortable surmise rising; and finding her nowhere there, he strolled on into the meadows.

Then, suddenly, he saw her, sitting on a rustic bench at a bend of the little brook.

Her eyes were bent upon the running water, and she did not look up as he approached her.

When he was beside her, her eyes met his, reluctantly and resentfully, and he was startled to observe that she had wept.