ound. The moon was up and had laid a silver carpet under the
trees. Fireflies flashed their little lights among the undergrowth like
fairies signalling.

Joan had sent her S. O. S. into the air and with supreme confidence
that it would reach Martin wherever he might be, left the window, went
to the pew in which Gilbert had arranged the cushions and sat down...
Martin had grown tired of waiting for her. She had lost him. But twice
before he had answered her call, and he would come. She knew it. Martin
was like that. He was reliable. And even if he held her in contempt
now, he had loved her once. Oh, what it must have cost him to leave her
room that night--it seemed so long ago--she had clung to being a kid
and had conceived it to be her right to stay on the girlhood side of
the bridge. To be able to live those days over again--how different she
would be.

Without permitting Gilbert to guess what she was doing, she must humor
him and gain time. She gave thanks to God that he was in this gentle,
exalted mood, and was treating her with a sort of reverence. Behind the
danger and the terror of it all she recognized the wonder of his love.

"Gilbert," she said softly.

"Well, my little spring girl?"

"Come and sit here, where I can see you."

"You have only to tell me what I'm to do," he said and obeyed at once.

How different from the old affected Gilbert--this quiet man with the
burning eyes who sat with his elbows on his knees and his back bent
towards her and the light of one of the lanterns on his handsome face.
She had played with a soul as well as with a heart, and also, it
appeared, with a brain. How fatal had been her effect upon men--Martin
out of armor and Gilbert on the wrong side of the thin dividing line.
Men's love--it was too big and good a thing to have played with, if she
had only stopped to think, or some one had been wise and kind enough to
tell her. Who cares? These two men cared and so did she, bitterly,
terribly, everlastingly.

Would Martin hear--oh, would he hear? Martin, Martin!

There was a long, strange silence.

"Well, my little Joan?"

"Well, Gilbert?"

He picked up her hand and put his lips to it. "Still thinking?" he
asked, with a curious catch in his voice.

"Yes, Gilbert, give me time."

He gave back her hand. "The night is ours," he said, but there was pain
in his eyes.

And there they sat, these two, within an arm's reach, on the edge of
the abyss. And for a little while