th my
hair and my teeth intact. One keeps one's hair until forty, doesn't
one?"

"I don't know. I'm not forty," says Monica. "But hurry, hurry out of the
garden, because the dew is falling."

Down the dark staircase, through the darker halls, into the brilliant
moonlight, goes Kit. The wind, soft as satin, plays about her pretty
brows and nestles through her hair, rewarding itself thus for its
enforced quiet of an hour ago. Revelling in the freedom she has gained,
Kit enters the garden and looks lovingly around upon her
companions,--the flowers.

Who would sleep when beauty such as this is flung broadcast upon the
earth, waiting for man to feast his slothful eyes upon it?

Lingeringly, tenderly, Kit passes by each slumbering blossom, or gazes
into each drowsy bell, until the moonlit patch of grass she had pointed
out to Monica is at last reached. Here she stands in shadow, glancing
with coy delight at the fairyland beyond. Then she plunges into it, and
looks a veritable fairy herself, slim, and tall, and beautiful, and more
than worthy of the wand she lacks.

Walking straight up her silver path, she goes to where the lilies grow,
in a bed close by the hedge. But, before she comes to them, she notes in
the hedge itself a wild convolvulus, and just a little beyond it a wild
dog-rose, parent of all roses. She stays to pluck them, and then--

"Kit," says a voice subdued and low, but so distinct as to sound almost
in her ear.

She starts, and then looks eagerly around her, but nothing can she see.
Was it a human voice, or a call from that old land that held great Zeus
for its king? A message from Olympus it well might be, on such a night
as this, when all things breathe of old enchantment and of mystic lore.
Almost she fears yet hopes to see a sylvan deity peep out at her from
the escalonia yonder, or from the white-flowered, sweetly-perfumed
syringa in that distant corner,--Pan the musical, perhaps, with his
sweet pipes, or a yet more stately god, the beautiful Apollo, with his
golden lyre. Oh for the chance of hearing such godlike music, with only
she herself and the pale Diana for an audience!

Perchance the gods have, indeed, been good to her, and sent her a
special messenger on this yellow night. Fear forgotten, in the ecstasy
of this hope, the strange child stands erect, and waits with eager
longing for a second summons.

And it comes, but alas! in a fatally earthly tone that ruins her fond
hope forever.