ught that his imagination had
projected her there. Since she had left him at the stairs, the picture
she had made in her white gown and red roses had been vividly
permanent, though she herself had gone.

But, now, her voice was real.

"Do you prowl under my windows all night, kind sir?" she laughed,
happily. "I believe you must be almost as much in love as I am."

The man reached forward, and seized her hand.

"It's morning," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"I couldn't sleep," she assured him. Then, she added serenely: "Do you
suppose that the moon shines like this every night, or that I can
always expect times like these? You know," she taunted, "it was so
hard to get you to admit that you cared that it was an achievement. I
must be appreciative, mustn't I? You are an altogether reserved and
cautious person."

He seized her in his arms with neither reserve nor caution.

"Listen," he said in an impassioned voice, "I have no right to touch
you. In five minutes, you will probably not even let me speak to you.
I had no right to speak. I had no right to tell you that I loved you!"

She did not draw away. She only looked into his eyes very solemnly.

"You had no right?" she repeated, in a bewildered voice. "Don't you
love me?"

"You don't have to ask that," he avowed. "You know it. Your own heart
can answer such questions."

"Then," she decreed with womanlike philosophy, "you had a right to say
so--because I love you, and that is settled."

"No," he expostulated, "I tell you I did not have the right. You must
forget it. You must forget everything." He was talking with mad
impetuosity.

"It is too late," she said simply. "Forget!" There was an indignant
ring in her words. "Do you think that I could forget--or that, if I
could, I would? Do you think it is a thing that happens every day?"

From a tree at the fence line came the softly lamenting note of a
small owl, and across the fields floated the strident shriek of a
lumbering night freight.

To Saxon's ears, the inconsequential sounds came with a painful
distinctness. It was only his own voice that seemed to him muffled in
a confusion of roaring noises. His lips were so dry that he had to
moisten them with his tongue.

To hesitate, to temporize, even to soften his recital, would mean
another failure in the telling of it. He must plunge in after his old
method of directness, even brutality, without preface or palliation.

Here, at all events, brutal