t! Good-night."

He looked after her a quick undecided moment as she made a step in front
of him, then at the half-burnt cigarette he held in his hand, threw the
end away with a hasty gesture, overtook her and walked beside her along
the corridor.

"I heard you and your mother come in," he said, as though explaining
himself. "Then I waited till I thought you must both be asleep, and came
down here to look at that wonderful effect on the old house." He pointed
to the silver palace outside. "I have a trick of being sleepless--a
trick, too, of wandering at night. My own people know it, and bear with
me, but I am abashed that you should have found me out. Just tell me--in
one word--how the ball went?"

He paused at the foot of the stairs, his hands on his sides, as keenly
wide-awake as though it were three o'clock in the afternoon instead of
three in the morning.

Womanlike, her mood instantly shaped itself to his.

"It went very well," she said perversely, putting her satin-slippered
foot on the first step. "There were six hundred people upstairs, and
four hundred coachmen and footmen downstairs, according to our man.
Everybody said it was splendid."

His piercing enigmatic gaze could not leave her. As he had often frankly
warned her, he was a man in quest of sensations. Certainly, in this
strange meeting with Aldous Raeburn's betrothed, in the midst of the
sleep-bound house, he had found one. Her eyes were heavy, her cheek
pale. But in this soft vague light--white arms and neck now hidden, now
revealed by the cloak she had thrown about her glistening satin--she was
more enchanting than he had ever seen her. His breath quickened.

He said to himself that he would make Miss Boyce stay and talk to him.
What harm--to her or to Raeburn? Raeburn would have chances enough
before long. Why admit his monopoly before the time? She was not in love
with him! As to Mrs. Grundy--absurd! What in the true reasonableness of
things was to prevent human beings from conversing by night as well as
by day?

"One moment"--he said, delaying her. "You must be dead tired--too tired
for romance. Else I should say to you, turn aside an instant and look at
the library. It is a sight to remember."

Inevitably she glanced behind her, and saw that the library door was
ajar. He flung it open, and the great room showed wide, its high domed
roof lost in shadow, while along the bare floor and up the latticed
books crept, here streaks and fingers,