All these things softened the mood in which Maurice came back to the
old town, and as he walked up the village street, so well remembered
yet so strange, he had a sense of unreality. The very homely
familiarity of it all made it appear the more like a dream. He felt his
heart-beats quicken as he approached the Ashe place, wondering if he
should see Mrs. Ashe. He had always, with all his affection, felt for
Philip's mother a sort of awe, as if she were more than a simple human
creature. He found it difficult to understand that Mrs. Singleton
should be staying with her, so incongruous was the association in his
mind of two such women. With Mrs. Ashe, Alice must at least be at her
best.
He walked up to the house, passing under the leafless lilac bushes with
a keen remembrance of how they were laden with odors in June. He
wondered if the tansy still grew under the sitting-room window, and if
the lilies-of-the-valley flourished on the north side of the house as
of old. Then he knocked with the quaint old black knocker, and with the
sound came back the present and the thought that he had before him an
interview which might be neither pleasant nor easy.
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