"Perhaps," she whispered, faintly. Then she said she could not.

Guy went to the door.

"Remember, I have not kissed you good night," he proclaimed, solemnly.
"And now I'm going. I shall wait from eleven o'clock, and stay all night
until you have kissed me."

"Oh, but Guy...."

"To-night," he said. "You promise?"

"Guy, if I dare, if I dare."

There were footsteps in the passage. He fled across the room, kissed her
momentarily and hurried out, saying good-by to the cousins, as he passed
them, with a kind of exultant affection.

Outside, the November night hung humid and oppressive; Guy, looking up,
felt rain falling softly yet with gathering intensity, and he lingered a
few moments in the drive, held by the whispering blackness. Behind him
the lamplight of the Rectory windows seemed for the moment sad and
unattainable and gave him the fancy he was drifting away from a friendly
shore. Then suddenly he marched away along the drive, content; for the
thought of "to-night," which latterly had often brought such a
presentiment of loneliness, now sounded upon his imagination like the
rapture of a nightingale.

Plashers Mead had never appeared so desirable as now, when it was the
prelude to such an enterprise as this of consecrating with a last
embrace the rain and gloom of November. If he had any hesitation about
the lightness or even, setting probity aside, about the prudence of such
an action, he justified himself with romantic reasons; and if he was
driven by conscience to an ultimate defense, he justified himself with
the exceptional circumstances that gave him a sanction to accept from
Pauline this sacrifice of her traditions. Impulses to consider what he
was doing were easily dismissed; indeed, before he reached his house
there was not one left. Inside, the warmth and comfort of Plashers Mead
were additional incentives to prosecute his resolve; every gleaming
book, the breathing of the dog upon the mat before the fire, the gentle
purr of the lamp, all seemed to demand that voluptuous renunciation
which would later urge him forth again into the night. That it would
probably be raining was not to prove an obstacle; Pauline would be more
sure to come if she thought he were standing outside in the rain. It was
a second Eve of St. Agnes; and Guy went across to his shelf and took
down Keats. He had come to the knights and ladies praying in their dumb
oratories, when there was a knock at the front door, and his min