y, glancing at her with a sudden gleam in her
eyes,--of gratitude, perhaps. A moment ago there had been a certain
awkwardness following on Olga's capricious action; now these few
careless, kindly words from this ugly stranger have dispelled it. And is
she so plain, after all? The fastidious Hermia, gazing at her intently,
asks herself this question. Surely before that bright and generous gleam
in her eyes her freckles sink into insignificance.

"I knew you would like her," says Mr. Kelly, at this moment, speaking
low in Hermia's ear.

When a woman is startled she is generally angry. Mrs. Herrick is angry
now, whether because of his words, or the fact that she did not know he
was so close to her, let who will decide.

"You are very, very clever," she says, glancing at him from under
drooping lids, and then turning away.

"So they all tell me," returns he, modestly.

Rossmoyne, crossing the brilliant moonlit path that divides him from the
group round Hermia, seats himself beside her, thereby leaving Olga and
Ulic Ronayne virtually alone.

"You will regret that guitar to-morrow," says Ronayne,--"at least not
the thing itself (I can replace that), but----"

"I regret nothing," says Mrs. Bohun, carelessly,--"unless I regret that
you have taken an absurdly ill-tempered action so much to heart. I am
ill-tempered, you know."

"I don't," says Ronayne.

"So courteous a liar must needs obtain pardon. But let us forget
everything but this lovely night. Was there ever so serene a sky? see
how the stars shine and glimmer through the dark interstices of the
blue-gray clouds!"

"They remind me of something,--of some words," says Ronayne, in a low
voice. "They come to me now, I hardly know why, perhaps because of the
night itself, and perhaps because--" he hesitates.

Olga is staring dreamily at the studded vault above her.

"About the stars?" she asks, without looking at him.

"Yes:--

'A poet loved a star,
And to it whispered nightly,
Being so fair, why art thou, love, so far,
Or why so coldly shine who shin'st so brightly?'

The poet was presumptuous, it seems to me."

"Was he? I don't know. All things come to him who knows how to wait."

"Who's waiting?" says Kelly's voice from the other side of the fountain;
"and for what?"

"_Toujours_ Owen," says Mrs. Bohun, with a shrug of her pretty
shoulders. "Well, no one even in this life is altogether without a taste
of purgatory: mine (t