turned, the mysterious oval of her face wavering upward as though rising through dim water; her hair a heavier shadow against the gloom, her lips a living blossom, and her eyes luminous out of undiscoverable depths. The dark wrap she wore lost itself downward in long, fading lines; and all the hidden form and the nameless fragrance of her were wonderfully the same, one with midnight and midsummer. As I took her hand, I do not know what agony of restraint held my arms from around her; only I kept repeating[Pg 40] over and over to myself, "I have no right—I have no right"—and because of that I could not for a moment answer her in words. Suddenly from above came a sharp shock and the metallic splash of broken glass. The voices broke out in a quick murmur, and she shrank and shook as if cringing away from a blow.

[Pg 40]

"Oh, go quickly!" she cried. "They need me!"

I opened the door. "Good-by," I said weakly, "and—God bless you!" And even as I turned on the threshold to lift my hat the latch clicked behind me.[Pg 41]

[Pg 41]

CHAPTER IV

AN INSULT IN THE MORNING

I paused at the gate and looked back. In the upper windows lights were showing behind the shades, and now and then a swift shadow passed across the pane. Yet the house was altogether quiet, free within and without from any evidence of the unusual. A waning moon glowed large and distorted through the shrubbery, and from all about rose the sweet breath and innumerable tiny voices of the night, comfortable chirps and rustlings, the creak of frogs and the rasp of an occasional katydid; accentuating by their multiety and smallness the sense of overwhelming peace. As I went on, a quick movement at my feet made me start; then I smiled to recognize the clumsy hurry of a toad; and the incident seemed to point the contrast between the human tension of the last half-hour and the huge normality of the outer world. With every step it grew more difficult for me to believe in the turmoil[Pg 42] from which I had come; the strain and secrecy, the troubled voices and the moving lights became fictitious; as the scenes of a sensational story, plausible in the reading, turn to pasteboard and tinsel when we have closed the book. Only the quiet gloom was real, the hush and fresh aroma of ordinary night.

[Pg 42]

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