adventurous children who have climbed to a forbidden height from which
they discover a new world. The actual world at their feet was veiling
itself in dimness, and across the valley a clear moon rose in the denser
blue.

Suddenly they heard a remote sound, like the hum of a giant insect, and
following the high-road, which wound whiter through the surrounding
twilight, a black object rushed across their vision.

Lily started from her attitude of absorption; her smile faded and she
began to move toward the lane.

"I had no idea it was so late! We shall not be back till after dark," she
said, almost impatiently.

Selden was looking at her with surprise: it took him a moment to regain
his usual view of her; then he said, with an uncontrollable note of
dryness: "That was not one of our party; the motor was going the other
way."

"I know--I know----" She paused, and he saw her redden through the
twilight. "But I told them I was not well--that I should not go out. Let
us go down!" she murmured.

Selden continued to look at her; then he drew his cigarette-case from his
pocket and slowly lit a cigarette. It seemed to him necessary, at that
moment, to proclaim, by some habitual gesture of this sort, his recovered
hold on the actual: he had an almost puerile wish to let his companion
see that, their flight over, he had landed on his feet.

She waited while the spark flickered under his curved palm; then he held
out the cigarettes to her.

She took one with an unsteady hand, and putting it to her lips, leaned
forward to draw her light from his. In the indistinctness the little red
gleam lit up the lower part of her face, and he saw her mouth tremble
into a smile.

"Were you serious?" she asked, with an odd thrill of gaiety which she
might have caught up, in haste, from a heap of stock inflections, without
having time to select the just note. Selden's voice was under better
control. "Why not?" he returned. "You see I took no risks in being so."
And as she continued to stand before him, a little pale under the retort,
he added quickly: "Let us go down."

Chapter 7

It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice,
in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if
she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party.

"All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back,
sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an
indifferent shoulder