fter the charades."

"Good, good--after the charades!" they all cried, for there would be
charades like none which had ever been played before, with a real actor
to help them, to carry them through as they did on the stage. To them
the stage was compounded of mystery, gaiety and the forbidden.

So, for the next half-hour they were all at the disposal of the Man from
Outside, who worked as though it was a real stage, and they were real
players, and there were great audiences to see them. It was all quite
wonderful, and it involved certain posings, attitudes, mimicry and
pantomime, for they were really ingenious charades.

So it happened that Zoe's fingers often came in touch with those of
the stage-manager, that his hands touched her shoulders, that his cheek
brushed against her dark hair once, and that she had sensations never
experienced before. Why was it that she thrilled when she came near to
him, that her whole body throbbed and her heart fluttered when their
shoulders or arms touched? Her childlike nature, with all its warmth and
vibration of life, had never till now felt the stir of sex in its vital
sense. All men had in one way been the same to her; but now she realized
that there was a world-wide difference between her Judge Carcasson, her
little Clerk of the Court, and this young man whose eyes drank hers. She
had often been excited, even wildly agitated, had been like a sprite let
loose in quiet ways; but that was mere spirit. Here was body and senses
too; here was her whole being alive to a music, which had an aching
sweetness and a harmony coaxing every sense into delight.

"To-morrow evening, by the flume, where the beechtrees are--come--at
six. I want to speak with you. Will you come?"

Thus whispered the maker of this music of the senses, who directed the
charades, but who was also directing the course of another life than his
own.

"Yes, if I can," was Zoe's whispered reply, and the words shook as she
said them; for she felt that their meeting in the beech-trees by the
flume would be of consequence beyond imagination.

Judge Carcasson had always said that Zoe had judgment beyond her years;
M. Fille had remarked often that she had both prudence and shrewdness as
well as a sympathetic spirit; but M. Fille's little whispering sister,
who could never be tempted away from her home to any house, to whom the
market and the church were like pilgrimages to distant wilds, had said
to her brother:

"Wait,