th the moonlight making it all queer and white, and the gulls
fast asleep and floating--don't you remember?"

"Then he doesn't expect you?"

"Oh no," said Garda; "it's my own idea. I knew he would be alone,
because Mrs. Rosalie can't go out in fogs, she's afraid of rheumatism."

"And you see nothing out of the way in all this?"

"No."

"--Stealing out secretly--"

"Only because you would have stopped it if you had known."

"--At night, and by yourself?"

"The night's as good as the day when there's moonlight like this. And I
shall not be by myself, I shall be with Lucian; I'd rather be with him
than anybody."

"And Evert?"

"Well," said Garda, "the truth is--the truth is I'm _tired_ of Evert."

"You'd better tell him that," said Margaret, with a quick and curious
change in her voice.

"I will, if you think best."

"No, don't tell him; you're not in earnest," said Margaret, calming
himself.

"Yes, I am in earnest. But I shall miss Lucian if I stay here longer."

"Garda, give this up."

"I don't see how you happened to hear me come out," said the girl,
laughing and vexed.

"Have you been out in this way before?"

"No; how could I? Lucian has only just come down here. I should a great
deal rather tell you everything, Margaret, as fast as I think of it, and
I would--only you would be sure to stop it."

"I want to stop this. Give it up--if you care at all for me; I make it a
test."

"You know I care; if you put it on that ground, of course I shall have
to give it up," said Garda, disconsolately.

"Come back to the house, then," said Margaret, taking her hand.

"No, I'm not going back, I'm going down to the landing," answered the
girl. She appeared to think that she had earned this obstinacy by her
larger concession.

"But you said you would give up--"

"If we keep back under the trees he cannot see us; I mean what I say--he
_shall_ not. But I want to see him, I want to see him go by."

She drew Margaret onward, and presently they reached the shore. "There
he comes!" she said--"I hear the oars." And she held tightly to
Margaret's hand, as if to keep herself from running out to the
platform's edge.

The broad lagoon, rippling in the moonlight, lay before them; the night
was so still that they heard the dip of the oars long before they saw
the boat itself; Patricio, opposite, looked like a country in a dream.
The giant limbs of the live-oak under which they stood rose high in the
air above th