, and there
was no other inn for at least ten miles. I think I was more troubled
than Nicolete. When, after interviewing the landlady, I came and told
her of the dilemma, where she sat in the little parlour wearied out
with the day's walk, she blushed, it is true, but seemed little put
about. Indeed, she laughed, and said it was rather fun, "like
something out of Sterne,"--of such comfort is a literary reference in
all seasons and circumstances,--and then she added, with a sweet look
that sent the blood rioting about my heart, "It won't matter so much,
will it, love, NOW?"

There proved nothing for it but to accept the situation, and we made
the arrangement that Nicolete was to slip off to bed first, and then
put out the light and go to sleep. However, when I followed her,
having sat up as long as the landlady's patience would endure, I found
that, though she had blown out the candle, she had forgotten to put out
the moon, which shone as though it were St. Agnes' Eve across half the
room.

I stole in very shyly, kept my eyes sternly from Nicolete's white bed,
though, as I couldn't shut my ears, the sound of her breathing came to
me with indescribable sweetness. After I had lain among the sheets
some five or ten minutes, I was suddenly startled by a little voice
within the room saying,--

"I'm not asleep."

"Well, you should be, naughty child. Now shut your eyes and go to
sleep,--and fair dreams and sweet repose," I replied.

"Won't you give me one little good-night kiss?"

"I gave you one downstairs."

"Is it very wicked to want another?"

There was not a foot between our two beds, so I bent over and took her
soft white shoulders in my arms and kissed her. All the heaped-up
sweetness of the whitest, freshest flowers of the spring seemed in my
embrace as I kissed her, so soft, so fragrant, so pure; and as the
moonlight was the white fire in our blood. Softly I released her,
stroked her brown hair, and turned again to my pillow. Presently the
little voice was in the room again,--

"Mayn't I hold your hand? Somehow I feel lonely and frightened."

So our hands made a bridge across which our dreams might pass through
the night, and after a little while I knew that she slept.

As I lay thus holding her hand, and listening to her quiet breathing, I
realised once more what my young Alastor had meant by the purity of
high passion. For indeed the moonlight that fell across her bosom was
not whiter than my