g soon after sunrise? Crailey Gray never rose at, or near,
sunrise in his life, though he sometimes beheld it, from another point
of view, as the end of the evening. It appears that someone must have
told him.

One night when the moon lay white on the trees and housetops, Miss Betty
paused in her evening promenade and seated herself upon a bench on the
borders of the garden, "touched," as the books of the time would have
put it, "by the sweet tranquillity of the scene," and wrought upon by
the tender incentive to sighs and melancholy which youth in loneliness
finds in a loveliness of the earth. The breeze bore the smells of the
old-fashioned garden, of violets and cherry blossoms, and a sound of
distant violins came on the air playing the new song from the new opera.

"But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,
That you loved me just the same--"

they sang; and with the lilt of them and the keen beauty of the night,
the inherited pain of the ages rose from the depths of the young girl's
heart, so that she thought it must break; for what reason she could not
have told, since she was without care or sorrow that she knew, except
the French Revolution, yet tears shone upon the long lashes. She shook
them off and looked up with a sudden odd consciousness. The next second
she sprang to her feet with a gasp and a choked outcry, her bands
pressed to her breast.

Ten paces in front of her, a gap in the shrubbery where tall trees rose
left a small radiant area of illumination like that of a lime-light in
a theatre, its brilliancy intensified by the dark foliage behind. It
was open to view only from the bench by which she stood, and appeared,
indeed, like the stage of a little theatre a stage occupied by a bizarre
figure. For, in the centre of this shining patch, with the light strong
on his face, was standing a fair-haired young man, dressed in a yellow
coat, a scarlet and white striped waistcoat, wearing a jauntily cocked
black hat on his bead. And even to the last detail, the ribbon laces
above the ankle and the gold-buckled shoes, he was the sketch of Georges
Meilhac sprung into life.

About this slender figure there hung a wan sweetness like a fine
mist, almost an ethereality in that light; yet in the pale face lurked
something reckless, something of the actor, too; and though his smile
was gentle and wistful, there was a twinkle behind it, not seen at
first, something amused and impish; a small surprise underne