Together

Thus mused Godfrey, trying to picture to himself what Isobel looked like when she had stood by his side on that long-past autumn eve, and only succeeded in remembering exactly what she looked like when she was kissing a rose with a certain knight in armour in a square garden, since for some perverse reason it was this picture that remained so painfully clear to his mind. Then he drifted off into speculations upon the general mystery of things of a sort that were common with him, and in these became oblivious of all else.

He did not even hear or see a tall young woman enter the church, clad in summer white, no, not when she was within five pace and, becoming suddenly aware of his presence, had stopped to study him with the acutest interest. In a flash Isobel knew who he was. Of course he was much changed, for Godfrey, who had matured early, as those of his generation were apt to do, especially if they had led a varied life, was now a handsome and well-built young man with a fine, thoughtful face and a quite respectable moustache.

"How he has changed, oh! how he has changed," she thought to herself. The raw boy had become a man, and as she knew at once by her woman's instinct, a man with a great deal in him. Isobel was a sensible member of her sex; one, too, who had seen something of the world by now, and she did not expect or wish for a hero or a saint built upon the mid-Victorian pattern, as portrayed in the books of the lady novelists of that period. She wanted a man to be a man, by preference with the faults pertaining to the male nature, since she had observed that those who lacked these, possessed others, which to her robust womanhood seemed far worse, such as meanness and avarice and backbiting, and all the other qualities of the Pharisee.