epy.... Sure
thing!... Come on!"

He hung up the receiver, turned, and made his way through the dusk
toward the library which was opposite the music-room across the big
entrance hall.

Before he turned on any light he paused to look out at the splendour
of the stars. The night had grown warmer; there was no haze, now, only
an argentine clarity in which shadowy trees stood mysterious and
motionless and the dim lawn stretched away to the distant avenue and
wall, lost against their looming border foliage.

Once he thought he heard a slight sound somewhere in the house behind
him, but presently remembered that the family cat held sway among the
mice at such an hour.

A little later he turned from the window to light a lamp, and found
himself facing a slim, white figure in the starry dusk.

"Dulcie!" he exclaimed under his breath.

"I want to talk to you."

"Why on earth are you wandering about at this hour?" he asked. "You
made me jump, I can tell you."

"I was awake--not in bed yet. I heard the telephone. Then I went out
into the west corridor and saw you going down stairs.... Is it all
right for me to sit here in my night dress with you?"

He smiled:

"Well, considering----"

"Of course!" she said hastily, "only I didn't know whether outside
your studio----"

"Oh, Dulcie, you're becoming self-conscious! Stop it, Sweetness. Don't
spoil things. Here--tuck yourself into this big armchair!--curl up!
There you are. And here I am----" dropping into another wide, deep
chair. "Lord! but you're a pretty thing, Dulcie, with your hair down
and all glimmering with starlight! We'll try painting you that way
some day--I wouldn't know how to go about it offhand, either. Maybe a
screened arc-lamp in a dark partition, and a peep-hole--I don't
know----"

He lay back in his chair, studying her, and she watched him in silence
for a while. Presently she sighed, stirred, placed her feet on the
floor as though preparing to rise. And he came out of his impersonal
abstraction:

"What is it you want to say, Sweetness?"

"Another time," she murmured. "I don't----"

"You dear child, you came to me needing the intimacy of our
comradeship--perhaps its sympathy. My mind was wandering--you are so
lovely in the starlight. But you ought to know where my heart is."

"Is it open--a little?"

"Knock and see, Sweetness."

"Well, then, I came to ask you--Mr. Skeel is coming to-morrow--to see
me--alone. Could it be contrived--without