es in May would have been
impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within
twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it's exactly
the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So--with all respect to
you--it wasn't much of a mental strain to decide on Como."

His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. "It took
a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule
of Como!"

"Well, I should have preferred something in a lower key; at least I
thought I should till we got here. Now I see that this place is idiotic
unless one is perfectly happy; and that then it's-as good as any other."

She sighed out a blissful assent. "And I must say that Streffy has done
things to a turn. Even the cigars--who do you suppose gave him those
cigars?" She added thoughtfully: "You'll miss them when we have to go."

"Oh, I say, don't let's talk to-night about going. Aren't we outside of
time and space...? Smell that guinea-a-bottle stuff over there: what is
it? Stephanotis?"

"Y-yes.... I suppose so. Or gardenias.... Oh, the fire-flies! Look...
there, against that splash of moonlight on the water. Apples of silver
in a net-work of gold...." They leaned together, one flesh from shoulder
to finger-tips, their eyes held by the snared glitter of the ripples.

"I could bear," Lansing remarked, "even a nightingale at this
moment...."

A faint gurgle shook the magnolias behind them, and a long liquid
whisper answered it from the thicket of laurel above their heads.

"It's a little late in the year for them: they're ending just as we
begin."

Susy laughed. "I hope when our turn comes we shall say good-bye to each
other as sweetly."

It was in her husband's mind to answer: "They're not saying good-bye,
but only settling down to family cares." But as this did not happen to
be in his plan, or in Susy's, he merely echoed her laugh and pressed her
closer.

The spring night drew them into its deepening embrace. The ripples of
the lake had gradually widened and faded into a silken smoothness, and
high above the mountains the moon was turning from gold to white in
a sky powdered with vanishing stars. Across the lake the lights of a
little town went out, one after another, and the distant shore became a
floating blackness. A breeze that rose and sank brushed their faces with
the scents of the garden; once it blew out over the water a great white
moth like a drifting magnolia petal