she had seemed something witch-like, the wilful spirit of
the passionate spring herself, mixed of her aerial essences and jungle
wildernesses; in this scented dim-lit close she was grave-eyed, subdued,
a paler pensive woman of under half-guessed sadnesses and haunting
moods. With her answer, however, this gravity seemed to slip from her
like a garment. She laughed lightly.

"I love to prowl myself. I think sometimes I like the night better than
the day. I believe in one of my incarnations I must have been a
panther."

"Do you know," he said, "I followed the scent of those roses? I smelled
it at Damory Court."

"It goes for miles when the air is heavy as it is to-night. How terrible
it would be if roses were intoxicating like poppies! I get almost tipsy
with the odor sometimes, like a cat with catnip."

They both laughed. "I'm growing superstitious about flowers," he said.
"You know a rose figured in our first meeting. And in our last--"

She shrank momentarily. "The cape jessamines! I shall always think of
_that_ when I see them!"

"Ah, forgive me!" he begged. "But when I remember what you did--for me!
Oh, I know! But for you, I must have died."

"But for me you wouldn't have been bitten. But don't let's talk of it."
She shivered suddenly.

"You are cold," he said. "Isn't that gown too thin for this night air?"

"No, I often walk here till quite late. Listen!"

The bird song had broken forth again, to be answered this time by a
rival's in a distant thicket. "My nightingale is in good voice."

"I never heard a nightingale before I came to Virginia. I wonder why it
sings only at night."

"What an odd idea! Why, it sings in the day-time, too."

"Really? But I suppose it escapes notice in the general chorus. Is it a
large bird?"

"No; smaller than a thrush. Only a little bigger than a robin. Its nest
is over there in that hedge--a tiny loose cup of dried oak-leaves, lined
with hair, and the eggs are olive color. How pretty the hedge looks now,
all tangled with firefly sparks!"

"Doesn't it! Uncle Jefferson calls them 'lightning-bugs.'"

"The name is much more picturesque. But all the darky sayings are. I
heard him telling our butler once, of something, that 'when de debble
heah dat, he gwine sen' fo' he smellin'-salts.' Who else would ever have
put it that way? Do you find him and Aunt Daph useful?"

"He has been a godsend," he said fervently; "and her cooking has taught
me to treat her with passionate