I give Edith a piece of my mind, when I get hold of her. But it
doesn't really matter. I think I like it better to have not even Lion.
Just you--and the stars. They are beginning to prick out," he said. He
stretched himself on the ground beside her, his hands clasped under his
head, and his happy eyes looking up into the abyss. "Sing, Star, sing!"
he said. So she sang, softly:

"How many times do I love again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain
Unraveled from the tumbling main
And threading the eye of a yellow star--
So many times--

"It looks," she broke off, "a little black in the west? And--was that
lightning?"

"Only heat lightning. And if it should storm,--I have you here, in my
arms, alone!" He turned and caught her to him, and his mouth crushed
hers. Her eyes closed, and her passion answered his, and all that he
whispered. Yet while he kissed her, her eyes opened and she looked
furtively beyond him, toward that gathering blackness.

They lay there together in the starlit dark, for a long time, his head
on her breast. Sometimes she thrilled at his touch or low word, and
sometimes she held his hand against her lips and kissed it--which made
him protest--but suddenly he said, "By George! Nelly, I believe we are
going to have a shower!"

Instantly she was alert with fright, and sat up, and looked down into
the valley, where the heat lightning, which had been winking along the
line of the hills, suddenly sharpened into a flash. "_Oh!_" she said,
and held her breath until, from very far off, came a faint grumble of
thunder. "Oh, Maurice!" she said, "it is horrible to be out here--if it
thunders!"

"We won't be. Well go into the cabin, and we'll hear the rain on the
roof, and the clash of the branches; and we'll see the lightning through
the chinks--and I'll have you! Oh, Nelly, we shall be part of the
storm!--and nothing in God's world can separate us."

But this time she could not answer with any elemental impulse; she had
no understanding of "being part of the storm"; instead, she watched the
horizon. "Oh!" she said, flinching. "I don't like it. What shall we do?
Maurice, it _is_ going to thunder!"

"I think I did feel a drop of rain," he said,--and held out his hand:
"Yes, Star, rain! It's begun!" He helped her to her feet, gathered up
some of the cushions, and hurried her toward the little shelter. She ran
ahead of him, her very feet reluctant, lest the possible