by myself,"
she concluded; "but fancying it with you would somehow be so awfully
different...."

That was how it began: and this lakeside dream was what it had led up
to. Fantastically improbable as they had seemed, all her previsions had
come true. If there were certain links in the chain that Lansing
had never been able to put his hand on, certain arrangements and
contrivances that still needed further elucidation, why, he was lazily
resolved to clear them up with her some day; and meanwhile it was worth
all the past might have cost, and every penalty the future might exact
of him, just to be sitting here in the silence and sweetness, her
sleeping head on his knee, clasped in his joy as the hushed world was
clasped in moonlight.

He stooped down and kissed her. "Wake up," he whispered, "it's
bed-time."

III.

THEIR month of Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last
moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had
been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since
he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly
bouncers who insisted on taking possession at the date agreed on.

Lansing, leaving Susy's side at dawn, had gone down to the lake for a
last plunge; and swimming homeward through the crystal light he looked
up at the garden brimming with flowers, the long low house with the
cypress wood above it, and the window behind which his wife still
slept. The month had been exquisite, and their happiness as rare, as
fantastically complete, as the scene before him. He sank his chin into
the sunlit ripples and sighed for sheer content....

It was a bore to be leaving the scene of such complete well-being, but
the next stage in their progress promised to be hardly less delightful.
Susy was a magician: everything she predicted came true. Houses were
being showered on them; on all sides he seemed to see beneficent spirits
winging toward them, laden with everything from a piano nobile in Venice
to a camp in the Adirondacks. For the present, they had decided on the
former. Other considerations apart, they dared not risk the expense of a
journey across the Atlantic; so they were heading instead for the Nelson
Vanderlyns' palace on the Giudecca. They were agreed that, for reasons
of expediency, it might be wise to return to New York for the coming
winter. It would keep them in view, and probably lead to fresh
opportunities; indeed, Susy already