lted, harkened after the Creole's receding step, thought long, softly
called himself names, and then did a small thing which, although it
resulted in nothing tragic at the time, marked a turning point in his
life. He leapt the grove fence, returned to the shadows of the garden,
and silently made his way to its eastern, down-river side. Already the
dwelling's lower lights were going out while none yet shone above, and
he paused in deep shade far enough away to see, over its upper veranda's
edge, the tops of its chamber windows.

X

SYLVIA SIGHS

The house was of brick. So being, in a land where most dwellings are of
wood, it had gathered beauty from time and dignity from tried strength,
and with satisfying grace joined itself to its grounds, whose abundance
and variety of flowering, broad-leaved evergreens lent, in turn, a
poetic authenticity to its Greek columns and to the Roman arches of its
doors and windows. Especially in these mild, fragrant, blue nights was
this charm potent, and the fair home seemed to its hidden beholder
forever set apart from the discords and distresses of a turbulent world.
And now an upper window brightened, its sash went up, and at the
veranda's balustrade Anna stood outlined against the inner glow.

She may have intended but one look at the stars, but they and the spiced
air were enchanting, and in confidence that no earthly eye was on her
she tarried, gazing out to the farthest gleam of the river where it
swung southward round the English Turn.

Down in the garden a mirthful ecstasy ran through all the blood of her
culprit observer and he drank to her only with his eyes. Against the
window's brightness her dark outline showed true, and every smallest
strand of her hair that played along the contours of brow and head
changed his merriment to reverence and bade his heart recognize how
infinitely distant from his was her thought. Hilary Kincaid! can you
read no better than that?

Her thought was of him. Her mind's eye saw him on his homeward ride. It
marked the erectness of his frame, the gayety of his mien, the dance of
his locks. By her inner ear she heard his horse's tread passing up the
narrow round-stone pavements of the Creole Quarter, presently to echo in
old St. Peter Street under the windows of Pontalba Row--one of which was
Flora's. Would it ring straight on, or would it pause between that
window and the orange and myrtle shades of Jackson Square? Constance had
said th