ladies' footsteps had ceased to sound overhead, Laurie went
to the French window, opened it, and passed on to the lawn.

He was astonished at the warmth of the September night. The little
wind that had been chilly this afternoon had dropped with the coming
of the dark, and high overhead he could see the great masses of the
leaves motionless against the sky. He passed round the house, and
beneath the yews, and sat down on the garden bench.

It was darker here than outside on the lawn. Beneath his feet were the
soft needles from the trees, and above him, as he looked out, still
sunk in his thought, he could see the glimmer of a star or two between
the branches.

It was a fragrant, kindly night. From the hamlet of half a dozen
houses beyond the garden came no sound; and the house, too, was still
behind him. An illuminated window somewhere on the first floor went
out as he looked at it, like a soul leaving a body; once a sleepy bird
somewhere in the shrubbery chirped to its mate and was silent again.

Then as he still labored in argument, putting this against that, and
weighing that against the other, his emotion rose up in an
irresistible torrent, and all consideration ceased. One thing
remained: he must have Amy, or he must die.

* * * * *

It was five or six minutes before he moved again from that attitude of
clenched hands and tensely strung muscles into which his sudden
passion had cast him.

During those minutes he had willed with his whole power that she
should come to him now and here, down in this warm and fragrant
darkness, hidden from all eyes--in this sweet silence, round which
sleep kept its guard. Such things had happened before; such things
must have happened, for the will and the love of man are the mightiest
forces in creation. Surely again and again it had happened; there must
be somewhere in the world man after man who had so called back the
dead--a husband sobbing silently in the dark, a child wailing for his
mother; surely that force had before, in the world's history, willed
back again from the mysterious dark of space the dear personality that
was all that even heaven could give, had even compelled into a
semblance of life some sort of body to clothe it in. These things must
have happened--only secrets had been well kept.

So this boy had willed it; yet the dark had remained empty; and no
shadow, no faintly outlined face, had even for an instant blotted out
th