it of boldness was awake in her,
urging her to take hold of her golden hour with both hands, nothing
doubting. But the man, even when he charmed her most, failed to
inspire her trust. And while she stood hesitating, his gaze never left
her face.

"Are you thinking it would scandalise _la petite mere_?"

"It might. She is easily scandalised!"

"But you would like to come?"

"Yes--I would like to come."

"_Eh bien_--that is enough."

"Is it?"

She looked up at him now with those great, truthful eyes of hers, which
he found oddly disconcerting at times.

"Enough for me, at all events!" he answered boldly. "Come!"

And she came.

The flagged quadrangle, walled in with darkness and worn with the tread
of numberless women's feet, showed silver-grey in the light of a moon
nearing the full; and above it, in a square patch of sky, stars
sparkled with a veiled radiance like diamonds caught in a film of
gossamer. As Elsie emerged from the shadow of the verandah, she had a
sense of stepping into an unreal world, and the Palace walls, shutting
out the familiar contours of earth, strengthened the illusion. The
night seemed the accomplice of her mood, in league with her own
exquisite sensibility; a night created for sheltering tenderness.

Michael Maurice, divining her sensations with the uncanny accuracy of
his type, pressed a little closer to her as they walked, so that now
and again, as if by chance, his arm brushed her own, and each contact
quickened her happy commotion of heart and pulse. They came upon a
rough stone bench, and he paused.

"It is pleasanter to sit, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Yes. But we mustn't sit long."

"Mustn't we? How does one measure time on such a night as this? By
the beating of hearts, or by the pulsations of stars?"

She laughed softly.

"How foolish you are!"

"It is good to be foolish at the right time, and with the right person!
Wisdom is the death's-head at the feast of life. But we are going to
shut her outside the door for a whole week--you and I."

The strangely sweet magic of those linked pronouns stirred Elsie as
never before; though the sound of them had pleased her once, not a
little, on the lips of Kenneth Malcolm. Bud she answered lightly, as
women will, when they feel barriers giving way.

"I never knew I had agreed to anything so desperate!"

He had laid his arm along the back of the seat; so that his hand was
within an inch of her shoulder. He moved it clo