e the grass damp, but Iris did not care. Threads of silver light
picked out a dainty tracery, and here and there set a dew-drop to
gleaming like a diamond among unnumbered pearls. Drowsy chirps came
from the maples above her, where the little birds slept in their swaying
nests and dreamed of wild flights at dawn. A great white moth brushed
against her face, as softly as thistledown, and she laughed, because it
was so like a kiss.

Down toward her corner of the garden she went, her dimity skirts
daintily uplifted. The moonlight touched a cobweb woven across the
rose-bush, and made a rainbow of it.

"A little lost rainbow," thought Iris, "out alone in the night, like
me!"

She stooped and gathered a sprig of mignonette, then a bit of rosemary
from Mrs. Irving's garden. "She won't care," said Iris, to herself; "she
used to love somebody, long ago."

She bound the two together with a blade of grass, and put the merest
kiss between them, then impulsively wiped it away. But, after all, some
trace of it must linger, and Iris did not intend to give too much, so
she threw it aside, as it happened, into Lynn's garden. Then she
gathered another sprig of mignonette, another leaf of rosemary, bound
them together, and held them very far away, out of reach of temptation.

Back toward the gate she went, her heart wildly beating against the
imprisoned letter. She hesitated a moment in the shadow of the house.
The great white moth had followed her and again touched her face
caressingly. Suppose someone should see!

But there was no one in sight. "Anyhow," thought Iris, "if one wishes to
come out for a moment in the evening, to walk as far as the gate, it is
all right. If there should be rosemary and mignonette on the gate-post
in the morning, someone who was up very early might take it away before
anybody had seen it. There would be no harm in leaving it there
overnight, even though it isn't quite orderly."

She went bravely toward the gate, and the moonbeams made an aureole
about her hair. The light of dreams, shining through the mist,
transfigured her with silver sheen. The earth was exquisitely still, and
the sound of her little feet upon the gravelled path echoed and
re-echoed strangely.

Timidly, Iris put the rosemary and mignonette, bound together by a
single blade of grass, first upon one gate-post and then upon the other.
"Such a little bit!" she mused. "One couldn't call it a flower!" Yes,
mignonette was a flower, but