, close together by the balustrade of
the terrace.

It was a clear night, with a young moon, and the stars set deep in blue
so dark that the sky gave an impression of solidity. The air was full
of scents and of a soft balminess, with the faint nip of an early May
in the Southern hemisphere.

He had folded her light scarf round the child-like shoulders. The touch
of his big hand stirred her--it had not often done so in that peculiar
way. It roused something in her that she had thought dead or drugged to
sleep, and took her back for an emotional moment to a certain late
summer evening at Hurlingham, when she and Willoughby Maule had stood
in the garden together under the stars. There came to her an almost
fierce reaction against that moment. She felt a distinct emotion now,
but it was different--less tumultuous, and bringing her a soft sense of
enfoldment.

She slipped her hand gently into McKeith's, and they remained thus for
nearly a minute without speaking. He was the first to break the silence.

'Bridget,' he said impetuously, 'we're going to be husband and wife
to-morrow. It makes me tremble, darling--with happiness and hope, and
with fear, too. What have I done, a rough Bushy like me--to win a woman
like you? Well you know how I think about that. And I don't believe in
a man belittling himself to the woman he loves, though it's just
because he loves her so that he feels unworthy of her. And then it
comes over me again--badly sometimes--how little I really know of you,
and of your life, and of your feelings towards the other men you must
have had to do with--one other man in especial, may be, that you've
loved, or may have thought you loved. That's what I want to know about,
my dear.'

Her face was turned from his as she answered:

'What's the good of your knowing, Colin? Whatever there was is past.'

'But IS it past. Over and over again, I've started to ask you and have
pulled back. Now it's got like a festering sore in my heart, and I'm
afraid it will go on festering unless I'm satisfied. There WAS somebody
in especial--a man you cared for and might have married if he had been
a finer sort of chap than he turned out to be?'

She looked at him sharply.

'How do you know? Has Rosamond Tallant been telling you?'

'No,' he said, with complete candour. 'There wasn't a word of that sort
passed between us--and I wouldn't have heeded it if there had.'

'Joan, then? No, I'm sure Joan Gildea wouldn't have talked