Laurence threw open the high French window, and together they passed out onto the grey, semicircular flight of steps. Immediately below lay the Italian garden—its formal flower-borders, its faintly dripping fountains, its black, spire-like cypresses, white balustrades and statues, vague, mysterious, in the starlight. The great lawns stretched away beyond, crossed by the broad gravel walk, which showed pale for some fifty yards, and then was lost in the dusky shadow of the grove of lime-trees. In the north was a wide, white light travelling—since the March nights now grew short—along the horizon, through the quiet hours, from the last death-flush of sunset to the first birth-flush of the dawn.

Lawrence watched his companion anxiously as her little feet in their diamond-powdered slippers crossed the window-sill. With that impalpable hand in his, that scarcely perceptible flutter—as of a captive butterfly—against his fingers, he could not but entertain fears that the strong open air might work some change in her; that she might be drawn up and absorbed by the sharp, glittering starlight; that she might be resolved into nothingness by the keen breath of the night, or that some sturdy sea-breeze might arise and blow her quite away. But such as she was—woman, or sprite, or visitant from beyond the gates of the grave—she remained by his side. And together they passed down the garden alleys, and lingered by the dripping fountains watching the sleepless fish that moved—silent as the dainty lady herself—through the water of the lichen-encrusted, stone basins. They stood together beneath the dark cypresses which, even on winter nights, smell dry and warm of the south, and talk in husky, whispering accents of classic lands—of marble columns mellow with age, and saffron-plastered walls, over which great vines hang, and in the hot cracks of which scorpions breed, and light-footed lizards glance and scamper. And, still together, they went on—the unspoken sympathy between them growing, deepening—down the second flight of steps and along the broad, gravelled way. Here, in the open space, the whole panorama of the heavens was disclosed; and then, almost in spite of himself, Laurence broke into utterance. He talked, as never, even in his most brilliant moments, he had talked before. The scene was so majestic, and moreover he had so perfect a listener, every movement of whose graceful body, every glance of whose profound and gentle eyes expressed comprehension, accord—as when the violin strings answer, in exquisite melody, to the skilfully handled bow.

And so forgetting himself, ceasing to exercise that reticence—half-humorous, half-reverent—with which, as with a cloak, 

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