eft, and thus skirting the
ballroom without entering it, brings them to the foot of the central
staircase.

"Good-night," says Dysart in a low tone, retaining her hand for a
moment. All round them is a crowd separated into twos and threes, so
that it is impossible to say more than the mere commonplace.

"Good night," returns she in a soft tone. She has turned away from him,
but something in the intense longing and melancholy of his eyes compels
her to look back again. "Oh, you have been kind! I am not ungrateful,"
says she with sharp contrition.

"Joyce, Joyce! Let me be the grateful one," returns he. His voice is a
mere whisper, but so fraught is it with passionate appeal that it rings
in her brain for long hours afterward.

Her eyes fall beneath his. She moves silently away. What can she say to
him?

It is with a sense of almost violent relief that she closes the door of
her own room behind her, and knows herself to be at last alone.

CHAPTER XVII.

"And vain desires, and hopes dismayed,
And fears that cast the earth in shade,
My heart did fret."

Night is waning! Dies pater, Father of Day, is making rapid strides
across the heavens, creating havoc as he goes. Diana faints! the stars
grow pale, flinging, as they die, a last soft glimmer across the sky.

Now and again a first call from the birds startles the drowsy air. The
wood dove's coo, melancholy sweet--the cheep-cheep of the robin--the
hoarse cry of the sturdy crow.

"A faint dawn breaks on yonder sedge,
And broadens in that bed of weeds;
A bright disk shows its radiant edge,
All things bespeak the coming morn,
Yet still it lingers."

As Lady Swansdown and Baltimore descend the stone steps that lead to the
gardens beneath, only the swift rush of the tremulous breeze that stirs
the branches betrays to them the fact that a new life is at hand.

"You are cold?" says Baltimore, noticing the quick shiver that runs
through her.

"No: not cold. It was mere nervousness."

"I shouldn't have thought you nervous."

"Or fanciful?" adds she. "You judged me rightly, and yet--coming all at
once from the garish lights within into this cool sweet darkness here,
makes one feel in spite of oneself."

"In spite! Would you never willingly feel?"

"Would you?" demands she very slowly.

"Not willingly, I confess. But I have been made to feel, as you know.
And you?"

"Would you have a woman confess