et marching in Midsummer
array. There was always a sadness about these evenings of early June, a
sadness, and sometimes a threat when the wind blew loudly among the
young foliage. Those gusty eves were almost preferable to this
protracted and luminous melancholy in which the sinking crescent of the
moon hung scarcely more bright than ivory. The pensive beauty was too
much for Pauline, who wished that she could shut out the obstinate day
and read by candle-light such a book as _Alice in Wonderland_ until it
was time to go to bed. Her white fastness, rose-bloomed by sunset as she
dressed for dinner, reproached her intention of abandoning its shelter
to-night, and she determined that this should really be the last
escapade. There was no harm in what she had done, of course, as Guy
assured her, and yet there was harm in behaving so traitorously towards
that narrow white bed, towards pious, wide-eyed Saint Ursula and Tobit's
companionable angel.

The languor of the evening was heavy upon all the family; Monica was the
only one who had the energy to go to her instrument. She played Chopin,
and the austerity of her method made the ballads and the nocturnes more
dangerously sweet. Gradually the melodies lulled most of Pauline's fears
and charmed her to look forward eagerly to the velvet midnight when she
with Guy beside her would float deep into such caressing glooms. After
Monica had played them all into drowsiness, Pauline had to wait until
the last sound had died away in the house and the illumination of the
last window had faded from the bodeful night that was stroking her
window with invitation to come forth.

Twelve o'clock clanged from the belfry, and Pauline opened her bedroom
door to listen. She had put on her white frieze coat, for although the
night was warm, the wearing of such outdoor garb gave a queer kind of
propriety to the whole business, and at the far end of the long corridor
she saw herself in the dim candle-light mirrored like a ghost in the
Venetian glass. From the heart of the house the cuckoo calling midnight
a minute or two late made her draw back in alarm, and not merely in
alarm, but also rather sentimentally, as if by her action she were going
to offend that innocent bird of childhood. She wondered why to-night she
felt so sensitive beforehand, since usually the regret had followed her
action; but promising herself that to-night should indeed be the last
time she would ever take this risk, she crept