ten and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and
he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a
five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.
He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with
tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the gray
houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the
Stag Inn.

After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,
dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere, and working himself
up into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be
terrible if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived;
and to propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as
with such illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took
another dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a
few minutes after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour
and a half, he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what
to do. The tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and
uncomfortable without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains
of the bay window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her
rim appeared above the black hills, and presently a great moon of
dislustered gold swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared
to shed no light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was
lured from his room to walk for a while in the dews.

Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet
overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow
burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer
country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be
floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was
audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the
saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapors a shifting damascene;
and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in
his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play
upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows
munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream
itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the
bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a
scale like the deep notes