’Have you noticed how Ethel Eastwick goes after him?  And the odd part of it is, that she can’t see that he dislikes her.  He thinks nothing of her singing; he remained talking to me in the conservatory the whole time.  I asked him to come into the drawing-room, but he pretended to misunderstand me, and asked me if I felt a draught.  He said, “Let me get you a shawl.”  I said, “I assure you, Hubert, I don’t feel any draught.”  But he would not believe me, and said he could not allow me to sit there without something on my shoulders.  I begged of him not to move, for I knew that Ethel would never forgive me if I interrupted her singing; but he said he could get me a wrap without interrupting any one.  He opened the conservatory door, ran across the lawn round to the front door, and came back with—­what do you think?  With two wraps instead of one; one was mine, and the other belonged to—­I don’t know who it belonged to.  So I said, “Oh, what ever shall we do?  I cannot let you go back again.  If any one was to come in and find me alone, what ever would they think!” Hubert said, “Will you come with me?  A walk in the garden will be pleasanter than sitting in the conservatory.”  I didn’t like going at first, but I thought there couldn’t be much harm.’

It seemed to Emily very terrible and very wonderful, and she experienced throughout her numbed sense a strange, thrilling pain, akin to joy, and she sat, her little fragile form lost in the arm-chair, her great eyes fixed in ecstasy, seeing still the dark garden with the great star risen like a phantom above the trees.  That evening had been to her a wonder and an enchantment, and her pausing thoughts dwelt on the moment when the distant sound of a bell reached their ears, and the bell came nearer, clanging fiercely in the sonorous garden.  Then they saw a light—­some one had come for them with a lantern—­a joke, a suitable pleasantry, and amid joyous laughter, watching the setting moon, they had gone back to the tiled house, where dancers still passed the white-curtained windows.  Hubert had sat by her at supper, serving her with meat and drink.  In the sway of memory she trembled and started, looking in the great arm-chair like a little bird that the moon keeps awake in its soft nest.  She no longer wished to tell Julia of that night in the garden; her sensation of it lay far beyond words; it was her secret, and it shone through her dreamy youth even as the star had shone through the heavens that night.  Suddenly she said—­

‘I wonder what Hubert is doing in London?  I wonder where he is now?’

‘Now?  It is just nine.  I suppose he’s in some theatre.’

’I suppose he goes a great deal to the theatre.  I wonder who he goes with.  He has lots of friends in London—­actresses, I suppose; he knows them who play in his plays.  He dines at his club——­’

‘Or at a restaurant.’

’I wonder what a restaurant is like; ladies dine at restaurants, don’t they?’