that had leapt up to meet my caress a year ago,--and been
refused. We passed on to a door on the other side of the corridor,
which opened to another sitting-room. A lovely evening had given way to
a lovelier night. Beyond the long window panes, set open to the still
air, we caught sight of the sinking golden crescent of the moon towards
the south; above and all round, to the low horizon, the sky was
crowded, sparkling, and brilliant with stars. I moved two chairs close
up to the open window, but she stood by the sill and leaned forward to
the night air.

"You think me very silly?" she said, with her head turned away from me.

"I think you are not well, dearest," I said, gently.

There was silence. Words seemed frozen on my lips. A sort of terror
filled me of exciting or embarrassing her. I stood beside the window
frame watching her. After a minute or two she dropped back into a chair
and looked up at me with a laugh.

"I think I am all right, only you startled me! By the way, Victor, if
anything ever does happen to me, you will remember you have your work
and your talent to turn to, won't you? I mean you would not do anything
desperate. I want you to promise me that."

She lay back in the easy chair, burying her light head and polished
white shoulder in the velvet cushion, and swinging one little foot idly
as she looked up smiling for her answer. The bright light in the room
fell full upon her, and I looked down upon this brilliant piece of
life, full of glowing tints and warm pulses and subtle powers, and my
brain flamed with the pleasure of the senses. I hardly noted her words.

"Dear little girl!" I said, smiling back into her eyes. "I refuse to
think of such things at all!"

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter! I don't expect you would," she said,
laughing, the colour leaping up in her cheeks, and the vivid blue
deepening behind her lashes. "Come and make much of me now while you
have got me."

Her whole face and form were instinct with a delicious invitation, and
I bent down to and over her, filled with the delight of the moment. We
made one chair do for both of us, and looked through the window at
intervals to escape each other's eyes, and laughed at nothing, and
talked a very extraordinary astronomy. At last, with her soft fingers
in my hair and on my throat, and her white arm above the elbow clasped
in my hand, speech, even laughter, grew choked in dense feelings for
all the command I kept upon myself; and we