empty house, and--oh, dear
me, yes, your courage too.'

'Listen,' said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see the
pale, veiled face through this mist that had risen up over his eyes.
'I have no courage apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to
come!--a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a
grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted--every
one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the
pretence--oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without
a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my
mother, the face, the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream
leaves echoing. Ask me to come.'

She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse
stooped a little closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his.

'I hear, you know; I hear too,' she whispered. 'But we mustn't listen.
Come now. It's growing late.'

The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter of the
pony's hoofs. Night had darkened to its deepest when their lamp shone
white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely spoken. Lawford had
simply watched pass by, almost without a thought, the arching trees, the
darkening fields; had watched rise up in a mist of primrose light the
harvest moon to shine in saffron on the faces and shoulders of the few
wayfarers they met, or who passed them by. The still grave face beneath
the shadow of its veil had never turned, though the moon poured all her
flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in sudden
alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden doubt had
assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his hand to touch
her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and stillness
should be, even as the moment's fancy had suggested, only a far-gone
memory returned in dream.

Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came
down, and they talked a little in the cold air of the garden. He lit
a cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove the drowsy
little pony off into the moonlight.

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat
narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him, he
scattered out upon the others' silence. Lawford apparently had not yet
shaken himself free from the sorcery of the moonlight. His eyes shone
dark and full like