ntact, for the
touch of his hand upon hers.

She would have died before she would have made the first advance, but
it filled her as with secret fire. Finally a sort of anger possessed
her, anger at herself and at Horace. She became horribly ashamed of
herself, and angry at him because of the shame. She gazed out at the
wonderful masses of shadows which the trees made, and she gazed up
again at the sky and that floating crystal, and it seemed impossible
that it was within her as it was. Her clear face was as calm as
marble, her expression as immovable, her gaze as direct. It seemed as
if a man must be a part of the wonderful mystery of the moonlit night
to come within her scope of vision at all.

Rose chilled, when she did not mean to do so, by sheer maidenliness.
Horace, gazing at her calm face, felt in some way rebuked. He had led
a decent sort of life, but after all he was a man, and what right had
he to even think of a creature like that? He leaned back in his
chair, removing himself farther from her, and he also gazed at the
moon. That mysterious thing of silver light and shadows, which had
illumined all the ages of creation by their own reflected light,
until it had come to be a mirror of creation itself, seemed to give
him a sort of chill of the flesh. After all, what was everything in
life but a repetition of that which had been and a certainty of
death? Rose looked like a ghost to his fancy. He seemed like a ghost
to himself, and felt reproached for the hot ardor surging in his
fleshly heart.

"That same moon lit the world for the builders of the Pyramids," he
said, tritely enough.

"Yes," murmured Rose, in a faint voice. The Pyramids chilled her. So
they were what he had been thinking about, and not herself.

Horace went on. "It shone upon all those ancient battle-fields of the
Old Testament, and the children of Israel in their exile," he said.

Rose looked at him. "It shone upon the Garden of Eden after Adam had
so longed for Eve that she grew out of his longing and became
something separate from himself, so that he could see her without
seeing himself all the time; and it shone upon the garden in
Solomon's Song, and the roses of Sharon, and the lilies of the
valley, and the land flowing with milk and honey," said she, in a
childish tone of levity which had an undercurrent of earnestness in
it. All her emotional nature and her pride arose against Pyramids and
Old Testament battle-fields, when she had o