ntingly pretty. "Upon my
word, so it is," he said; "and you look just like a summer evening
yourself, Miss Daisy. Wonder if I could get some one to take my place
at pool before I play a single with Mrs. Halton, and stop out here
with you?"

Pleasant though the deed would have been to Daisy, his wish and his
desire were more essential. She could without struggle forgo the
pleasure of being with him, now that he had said that it was this that
he preferred.

"But indeed you mustn't do anything of the kind," she said. "Aunt
Jeannie wants you to play; she asked you. You must go in at once."

The fact that Mrs. Halton had carried off two men to the billiard-room
left the rest of the party out of the square; but Daisy, quite willing
to be the odd unit, strolled very contentedly out along the path that
led to the river. The moon had not long risen and shone very large and
low in the east, burning dimly and red through the heat haze and vapours
from the Thames. The air was very windless, and the river lay like a
sheet of grey steel at her feet, save where a little spreading feather
of black ripple showed the course of some water-rat. Bats wheeled and
dipped like some company of nocturnal swallows, pursuing their minute
prey, and uttering their little staccato cries so high in the scale that
none but the acute ear could hear them.

From the garden, as an occasional whisper of wind lifted the
down-dropping leaves of aspen and ash, the air came laden with the
scent of damp earth (for since sunset the gardeners had been busy) and
the spilt fragrance of sleeping flowers. Or occasionally a little
draught would draw from the river itself, and that to Daisy's nostril
was of even a more admirable quality, for it smelt of cool running water
and nought besides. On the far bank the mists lay in wisps and streamers
above the low-lying meadow, and the dark bulk of cattle and horses
loomed through them like rocks in a vaporous sea. But a fathom from the
ground the air was dry and clear; it was but in a shallow sea that these
rocks were submerged, and on this side of the river where Daisy walked
the banking-up of the path to form a protection to the garden against
the spring and winter floods raised her above these damp breathings of
the fruitful earth, and she moved in the clearness and austerity of
starshine and moonlight. And not her body only, but her mind and soul
walked in a light that was very romantic and wonderful, and seemed
some