red, although all the world, as it
said good night, was telling her that it was one of the most delightful
balls of the season.

The English nosegay had lost its white flower, for Patricia was not
in the family group. I looked everywhere for the gleam of her silvery
scarf, everywhere for Terence, while, the waltz music having ceased, the
Spanish students played 'Love's Young Dream.'

I hummed the words as the sweet old tune, strummed by the tinkling
mandolins, vibrated clearly in the maze of other sounds:--

'Oh! the days have gone when Beauty bright
My heart's chain wove;
When my dream of life from morn till night
Was Love, still Love.
New hope may bloom and days may come,
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there's nothing half so sweet in life
As Love's Young Dream.'

At last, in a quiet spot under the oak-tree, the lately risen moon found
Patricia's diamond arrow and discovered her to me. The Japanese lanterns
had burned out; she was wrapped like a young nun, in a cloud of white
that made her eyelashes seem darker.

I looked once, because the moonbeam led me into it before I realised;
then I stole away from the window and into my own room, closing the door
softly behind me.

We had so far been looking only at conventionalities, preliminaries,
things that all (who had eyes to see) might see; but this was
different--quite, quite different.

They were as beautiful under the friendly shadow of their urban oak-tree
as were ever Romeo and Juliet on the balcony of the Capulets. I may not
tell you what I saw in my one quickly repented-of glance. That would be
vulgarising something that was already a little profaned by my innocent
participation.

I do not know whether Terence was heir, even ever so far removed, to any
title or estates, and I am sure Patricia did not care: he may have been
vulgarly rich or aristocratically poor. I only know that they loved each
other in the old yet ever new way, without any ifs or ands or buts; that
he worshipped, she honoured; he asked humbly, she gave gladly.

How do I know? Ah! that's a 'Penelope secret,' as Francesca says.

Perhaps you doubt my intuitions altogether. Perhaps you believe in
your heart that it was an ordinary ball, where a lot of stupid people
arrived, danced, supped, and departed. Perhaps you do not think his name
was Terence or hers Patricia, and if you go so far as that in blindness
and incredulity I should no