They were standing on a soft carpet of moss, overhead the gentle summer breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night.  From far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel.  From the remote and infinite distance came the subdued roar of the sea.

The peace of the woodland, the sighing of the trees, the dark evening sky above, filled his heart with an aching longing for her.

“Offended me?” he murmured, passing his hand across his forehead, for his temples throbbed and his eyes were burning.  “Nay! why should you think so?”

“You are so cold, so distant now,” she said gently.  “We were such good friends when first I came here.  Thanet is a strange country to me.  It seems weird and unkind—­the woods are dark and lonely, that persistent sound of the sea fills me with a strange kind of dread....  My home was among the Surrey hills you know....  It is far from here....  I cannot afford to lose a friend....”

She sighed, a quaint, wistful little sigh, curiously out of place, he thought, in this exquisite mouth framed only for smiles.

“I have so few real friends,” she added in a whisper, so low that he thought she had not spoken, and that the elms had sighed that pathetic phrase into his ear.

“Believe me, Lady Sue, I am neither cold nor distant,” he said, almost smiling now, for the situation appeared strange indeed, that this beautiful young girl, rich, courted, surrounded by an army of sycophants, should be appealing to a poor dependent for friendship.  “I am only a little dazed ... as any man would be who had been dreaming ... and saw that dream vanish away....”

“Dreaming?”

“Yes!—­we all dream sometimes you know ... and a penniless man like myself, without prospects or friends is, methinks, more prone to it than most.”

“We all have dreams sometimes,” she said, speaking very low, whilst her eyes sought to pierce the darkness beyond the trees.  “I too ...”

She paused abruptly, and was quite still for a moment, almost holding her breath, he thought, as if she were listening.  But not a sound came to disturb the silence of the woods.  Blackbird and owl had ceased their fight for life, the squirrel had gone to rest:  the evening air was filled only by the great murmur of the distant sea.

“Tell me your dream,” she said abruptly.

“Alas! it is too foolish! ... too mad! ... too impossible....”

“But you said once that you would be my friend and would try to cheer my loneliness.”

“So I will, with all my heart, an you will permit.”

“Yet is there no friendship without confidence,” she retorted.  “Tell me your dream.”

“What were the use?  You would only laugh ... and justly too.”