her the heroine; but it was not a pleasant chapter she
had to read now. It reminded her too intensely of the mystery surrounding
the hero, and forced her to realize that stories of real life have not
always happy endings.

"But ours must!" she said to herself, springing up, unable to rest.
"Nothing can break our love; and while we have that we have everything!"

She could no longer sit still, and going into her bedroom she peeped
through the door into Knight's room beyond. It was dark, as she expected
to find it; for she had been almost sure that she would have heard him if
he had entered the vestibule.

Returning to her own rooms, she pulled back the sea-blue curtains
which covered the large window looking on to the loggia. The sky was
silver-white with moonlight between the black stems of the tall pines,
and a flood of radiance poured into the room. It was so beautiful and
bright, bringing with it so heavenly a sense of peace, that the girl
could not bear to draw the curtains again. She began slowly to undress
by moonlight and the faint red glow in the fireplace.

Her first act was to recover the blue diamond ring and to drop it with
shrinking fingers into the jewel-case on her dressing table.

Taking off her dinner frock, she put on a white silk gown which turned
her into a pale spirit flitting hither and thither in the silver dusk.
Still Knight had not come. She pulled out the four great tortoise-shell
pins which held up her hair, and let it tumble over her shoulders. As she
began to twist it into one heavy plait, she walked to the window and
stood looking out.

It seemed to her that the black trunks and outstretched branches of the
trees were like prison bars across the moonlight. She wished she had not
had that thought, but as it persisted, a figure moved behind the bars,
the figure of a man.

At first she was startled, for it was very late, long after one o'clock;
but as the man came nearer, she recognized him, although the light was at
his back. It was Knight; and as though her thought called to him, he
stopped suddenly, pausing on the lawn not far from the loggia. She could
not see his face, but it seemed that he was staring straight up at her
window.

"He has been walking in the moonlight, thinking things over just as I
have in here!" the girl told herself. Surely he could see her! But no,
he turned, and was striding away with his head down, when she knocked
sharply and impulsively on the pane.

He