"Good night."

He went back to the girl waiting for him in the starlight.

"Well," she said, smiling at his altered expression, "you certainly have
recovered your spirits."

He laughed and took her unreluctant fingers and kissed them--a boyishly
impulsive expression of the gay spirits which might have perplexed him
or worried him to account for if he had tried to analyse them. But he
didn't; he was merely conscious of a sudden inrush of high spirits--of a
warm feeling for all the world--this star-set world, so still and
sweet-scented.

"Stephanie, dear," he said, smiling, "you know perfectly well that I
think--always have thought--that there was nobody like you. You know
that, don't you?"

She laughed, but her pulses quickened a little.

"Well, then," he went on. "I take it for granted that our understanding
is as delightfully thorough as it has always been--a warm, cordial
intimacy which leaves us perfectly unembarrassed--perfectly free to
express our affection for each other without fear of being
misunderstood."

The girl lifted her blue eyes: "Of course."

"That's what I told Lily," he nodded, delighted. I told her that you and
I understood each other--that it was silly of her to suspect anything
sentimental in our comradeship; that whenever the real thing put in an
appearance and came tagging down the pike after you, you'd sink the gaff
into him--"

"The--what?"

"Rope him and paste your monogram all over him."

"I certainly will," she said, laughing. Eyes and lips and voice were
steady; but the tumult in her brain confused her.

"That is exactly what I told Lily," he said. "She seems to think that if
two people frankly enjoy each other's society they want to marry each
other. All married women are that way. Like clever decoys they take
genuine pleasure in bringing the passing string under the guns."

He laughed and kissed her pretty fingers again:

"Don't you listen to my sister. Freedom's a good thing; and people are
selfish when happy; they don't set up a racket to attract others into
their private paradise."

"Oh, Louis, that is really horrid of you. Don't you think Lily is
happy?"

"Sure--in a way. You can't have a perfectly good husband and baby, and
have the fun of being courted by other aspirants, too. Of course married
women are happy; but they give up a lot. And sometimes it slightly
irritates them to remember it when they see the unmarried innocently
frisking as they once frisked.