e got the key. There are only two, you know. You
have one. I have the other. And here's Peter."

The whistle had come nearer, clear and pure now like the pipe of Pan.
Peter stopped short.

"Rose!" he cried. "Osmond! What is it?"

Some accident seemed to him inevitable. Nothing else could have brought
about this meeting. Osmond answered, stopping as he did so, when Peter
turned to join him.

"I'll go back, now you've come, Peter. We were taking our walks abroad.
So we met. Good-night! good-night!"

It seemed a separate and a different farewell to each of them, and he
walked away. Peter stood staring after him, but Rose involuntarily
glanced up to heaven to see if the moon, out of her cloud now, would
give again the radiant assurance of that other moment. She longed
passionately for an instant's meeting even so with the man who had gone.
Then an exalted calm possessed her. She and Peter were walking rather
fast along the path; he had been talking and she was conscious that she
had not heard. Now a name arrested her.

"Had you met him before?" he was asking,--"Osmond?"

Her old habit of elusive courtesy came back to her. She laughed a
little.

"We haven't really met now, have we?" she responded pleasantly.

"He said he was afraid of you." Peter put it bluntly, out of his
curiosity and something else that was not altogether satisfaction. He
was not jealous of Osmond. He could not be, more than of a splendid
tree; but there was a something in the air he did not understand. He
felt himself pushing angrily against it, as if it were a tangible
obstruction. "He was afraid of you," he continued blunderingly, "because
you are a Parisian."

Rose laughed again, with that beguiling gentleness.

"But he spoke first, I believe," she explained carelessly. "I was
walking along and he asked me where I was going."

"What were you talking about?" Peter's voice amazed him, as it did her.
It was rough, remonstrating, he realized immediately, like the mood that
engendered it. He was shocked at himself and glad she did not answer.
Instead, she gave him her hand that he might help her over the low wall.

"See," she said, "your grandmother has a light in her room. She is lying
in bed reading good books."

"Does she read them to you?"

"A little word sometimes when I go in to say good-night."

"Grannie's a saint."

"Yes, and better. She's a beautiful grannie."

When they stepped into the hall, Peter, under the stress of his