but who had linked it up after a fashion with Carl and Mimi, offered no objection to Carl’s visits to the house. This lack of hostility changed in time to actual welcome due to the increased cordiality of Mrs. Hunter towards Mrs. Daquin which the latter sensed was in large measure because of his visits. This welcome was strengthened by Carl’s evident reformation. No longer was he seen with questionable companions. He had not been seen under the influence of liquor since he had begun again to visit Mimi, and every Sunday now he was to be seen with his parents and sister at church.
The old comradeship, deepened and enriched in a subtle but unmistakable way, was returning. Memory of that night during which so much had taken place, their reunion, Jean’s death and all the rest, had kept them from the torridity of feeling which had swept over them then. Instead there was a comforting sense of unity which ripened and deepened through the unspoken avowals of their love that flashed between them whenever they met.
This feeling was always deepest as they walked out in the evening. During the latter part of September and the early part of October there had been many crisply cold nights. Dying October and budding November brought that year balmy nights and pleasant days that were reminiscent of late summer. Through the darkened streets they strolled arm in arm. Here and there were street lamps which shed little light more than to a radius of fifteen or twenty feet. Back in tidy little yards sat squat little houses or imposing two-storied ones with an occasional light peeping from them in friendly manner. Up above, a moon, slender and graceful like a fragile, spreading horseshoe of coruscation, or full-bodied and vigorous in its yellowish brilliance. Mimi always liked the new moon best—it stirred her by its slender grace. But Carl preferred the full ones—“no wonder the Greeks and Romans gave a ‘corona’ as a badge of victory—those old boys were poets, and real ones—they saw that there could be no greater beauty and splendour than in an award resembling that band of light up yonder.”