red, and leaned back from him. "I suppose you think my promises
are quite wild, and they are. I do not know what I was talking about, or
what I meant, any better than you do. You may understand some day. It
is all--I mean that it hurts one to hear you say you do not care for
Carlow." She turned away. "Come."

"Where?"

"It is my turn to conclude the interview. You remember, the last time it
was you who--" She broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her
hands. "Ah, that!" she exclaimed. "I did not think--I did not mean to
speak of that miserable, miserable night. And _I_ to be harsh with you
for not caring to go back to Carlow!"

"Your harshness," he laughed. "A waft of eider."

"We must go," she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a
thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached
out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night
before his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet
generosity; his thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that
hand he had likened to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in
his own. And as they had so often stood together in their short day and
their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading
silence between them. A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran
through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through
the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the
silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells,
all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their
ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of
hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers
listening, a hundred years ago.

"I care for only one thing in this world," he said, tremulously. "Have
I lost it? I didn't mean to ask you, that last night, although you
answered. Have I no chance? Is it still the same? Do I come too late?"

The butterfly fluttered in his hand and then away.

She drew back and looked at him a moment.

"There is one thing you must always understand," she said gently, "and
that is that a woman can be grateful. I give you all the gratitude there
is in me, and I think I have a great deal; it is all yours. Will you
always remember that?"

"Gratitude? What can there--"

"You do not understand now, but some day you will. I ask you to remember
that my every act and though