steps crunch past.

"The beautiful and damned!" says Oliver amusedly, then a little louder
_"Amusez vous bien, mes enfants_" at a small and carefully modulated
shriek that comes from the other side of the low hedge, "The night's
still young. But Good Lord, isn't there _any_ place in the whole works
where two respectable people can sit without feeling like chaperones?"

They find one finally--it is at the far end of the gardens--a seat the
only reason for whose obvious desertion seems to be, comments Oliver,
that some untactful person has strung a dim but still visible lantern
directly above it--and relapses upon it silently. It is not until the
first cigarettes of both are little red dying stars on the grass beside
them that either really starts to talk.

"Cool," says Oliver, stretching his arms. The night lies over them light
as spray--a great swimming bath and quietness of soft black, hushed
silver--above them the whole radiant helmet of heaven is white with its
stars. From the house they have left, glowing yellow in all its windows,
unreal against the night as if it were only a huge flat toy made out
of paper with a candle burning behind it, comes music, blurred but
insistent, faint as if heard over water, dull and throbbing like
horse-hoofs muffled with leather treading a lonely road.

"Um. Good party."

"Real Piper party, Ted. And, speaking of Pipers, friend Peter certainly
seems to be enjoying himself--"

"Really?"

"Third bench on the left as we came down. Never go to a costume-party
dressed as a dancing-bear if you want to get any quiet work in on the
side. Rule One of Crowe's Social Code for Our Own First Families."

Ted chuckles uneasily and there is silence for another while as they
smoke. Both are in very real need of talking to each other but must feel
their way a little carefully because they are friends. Then--

"I," says Ted and--

"You," says Oliver, simultaneously. Both laugh and the little tension
that has grown up between them snaps at once.

"I suppose you know that Nancy's and my engagement went bust about three
weeks ago," begins Oliver with elaborate calm, his eyes fixed on his
shoes.

Ted clears his throat.

"Didn't _know_. Afraid it was something like that though--way you were
looking," he says, putting his words one after the other, as slowly as
if he were building with children's blocks. "What was it? Don't tell me
unless you want to, of course--_you_ know---"

"Want to, rat