a
sincerity that honored him.

He stood abashed and silent before this naive appreciation. It was at
once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain--that open admiration
of these clean-souled youngsters.

When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night
outside called me. I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the
battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas. I like to say my
rosary out of doors. The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me
with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer brought me closer to
the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.

_They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them
shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change
them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and
thy years shall have no end_.

The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing
Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the
hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.

Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of
laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as
yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well--he would hurl himself
into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.
He was like that.

My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our
grounds and Judge Mayne's. Thus, though I was completely hidden by the
screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could
plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path. Of
late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with
Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently. I
liked that. His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter's ambiguous
smile, from Inglesby's thoughts, even from her own mother's ambition.

I could see my girl's dear dark head outlined with a circle of
moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached my tall boy's
shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his arm, and he bent toward her,
bringing his close-cropped brown head nearer hers. I couldn't have
risen or spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely glanced out
at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my finger.

I reached the end of a decade: "_As it was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be_--"

They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space, the girl with
her darling face uplif