r-lighted sky.

A garden was wonderful at night--a place of strange silences and yet
stranger sound: trees darkly guarding mysterious paths that ran into
caverns of darkness; the scents of flowers rising from damp earth heavy
with dew; flowers that were weary with the dust and noise of the day
and slept gently, gratefully, with their heads drooping to the soil,
their petals closed by the tender hands of the spirits of the garden.
The night-sounds were strangely musical. Cries that were discordant in
the day mingled now with the running of distant water, the last notes
of some bird before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away bell,
the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; the voice that could
not be heard in the noisy chatter of the day rose softly now in a
little song of the night and the dark trees and the silver firelight of
the stars.

And it was all very romantic, of course. Harry Trojan had flung his
cares behind him and stepped over the soft turf of the lawns, a free
adventurer. It was not really very late, and there was an hour before
dinner; but he was not sure that he minded about that--they would be
glad to dine without him. There crossed his mind the memory of a night
in New Zealand. He had been walking down to the harbour in Auckland,
and the moon had shone in the crooked water-side streets, its white,
cold light crossed with dark black shadows of roofs and gables.
Suddenly a woman's voice called for help across the silence, and he had
turned and listened. It had called again, and, thinking that he might
help some one in distress, he had burst a dark, silent door, stumbled
up crooked wooden stairs, and entered an empty room. As he passed the
door there was a sound of skirts, and a door at the other end of the
room had closed. There was no one there, only a candle guttering on
the table, the remains of a meal, a woman's hat on the back of a chair;
he had waited for some time in silence, he had called and asked if
there was any one there, he had tried the farther door and found it
shut--and so, cursing himself for a fool, he had passed down into the
street again and the episode had ended. There was really nothing in
it--nothing at all; but it was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of
romantic adventure shot suddenly across a rather drab and colourless
existence, and he had liked to dwell on the possibilities of the affair
and ask himself about it. Who was the woman, and why had she crie