When they came, in the course of the dance, to one of the doors, she

stopped suddenly.

"Do you mind? It is so hot," she murmured.

"N--o," he said, as if awaking suddenly. "Let us go outside."

He caught up a fur cloak that was lying on a bench, and disregarding

her laughing remonstrance that the thing did not belong to her, he put

it round her and led her on to the terrace. She looked up at him just

as they were passing out of the stream of light, saw how set and hard

his face was, how straight the lips and sombre the eyes, and her hand,

as it rested lightly on his arm, quivered like a leaf in autumn. When

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they had got into the open air, he threw back his head and drew a long

breath.

"Yes; it was hot in there," he said.

They walked slowly up and down for a minute, passing and repassing

similar couples; then suddenly, as if the presence of others, the sound

of their voices and laughter, jarred upon him, Stafford said: "Shall we go into the garden? It is quiet there--and I want to speak to

you."

"If you like," she said, in a low voice, which she tried to make as

languid as usual; but her heart began to beat fiercely and her lips

trembled, and he might have heard her breath coming quickly had he not

been absorbed in his own reflections.

They went down the steps and into the semi-darkness of the beautiful

garden. The silence was broken by the hum of the distant voices and the

splashing of a fountain which reflected the electric light as the spray

rose and fell with rhythmic regularity. Stafford stopped at this and

looked at the reflection of the stars in the shallow water. Something

in its simplicitude and the quiet, coming after the glitter and the

noise of the ball-room, called up the remembrance of Herondale, and the

quiet, love-laden hours he had spent there with Ida. The thought went

through him with a sharp pain, and he thrust it away from him as one

thrusts away a threatening weakness.

"What is it you wanted to say to me?" asked Maude, not coldly or

indifferently as she would have asked the question of another man, but

softly, dreamily.

He walked on with her a few paces, looking straight before him as if he

were trying to find words suitable for the answer; then he turned his

face to her and looked at her steadily, though his head was burning and

the plash of the fountain sounded like the roar of the sea in his ears.




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