masses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now
advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the grass,
turned into silver by the moonlight. At the furthest edge, through the
pushing pyramids of chestnut blossom and the dim drooping gold of the
laburnums, could be seen the bastions and battlements of the old city
wall, once a fighting reality, now tamed into the mere ornament and
appendage of this quiet garden. Over the trees and over the walls rose
the spires and towers of a wondrous city; while on the grass, or through
the winding paths disappearing into bosky distances, flickered white
dresses, and the slender forms of young men and maidens. A murmur of
voices rose and fell on the warm night air; the sound of singing--the
thin sweetness of boyish notes--came from the hall, whose decorated
windows, brightly lit, shone out over the garden.

"It's Oxford--and it's Brahms," said Constance. "I seem to have known it
all before in music: the trees--the lawn--the figures--appearing and
disappearing--the distant singing--"

She spoke in a low, dreamy tone, her chin propped on her hand. Nothing
could have been, apparently, quieter or more self-governed than her
attitude. But her inner mind was full of tumult; resentful memory;
uneasy joy; and a tremulous fear, both of herself and of the man at her
feet. And the man knew it, or guessed it. He dragged himself a little
nearer to her on the grass.

"Why didn't you tell me when you were coming?"

The tone was light and laughing.

"I owe you no account of my actions," said the girl quickly.

"We agreed to be friends."

"No! We are not friends." She spoke with suppressed violence, and
breaking a twig from the tree overshadowing her, she threw it from her,
as though the action were a relief.

He sat up, looking up into her face, his hands clasped round his knees.

"That means you haven't forgiven me?"

"It means that I judge and despise you," she said passionately; "and
that it was not an attraction to me to find you here--quite
the reverse!"

"Yet here you are--sitting with me in this garden--and you are looking
delicious! That dress becomes you so--you are so graceful--so
exquisitely graceful. And you never found a more perfect setting than
this place--these lawns and trees--and the old college walls. Oxford was
waiting for you, and you for Oxford. Are you laughing at me?"

"Naturally!"

"I could rave on by the hour if you would listen to me."