After the Doctor had gone Wade sat for a while longer on the porch.  He didn’t feel the least bit sleepy, and the Doctor had shaken his determination in spite of himself.  Supposing, after all—­then he shook his head and sighed.  There was the note.  He fumbled in his pocket and found it and looked at it in the moonlight.  There was no use in imagining things when that sheet of paper stared him in the face.  He strove to reread the message, but the light was too faint.  He folded it again, started to drop it back in his pocket, hesitated, and then tore it savagely into tiny bits and tossed it over the side of the porch.  It was as though he had destroyed a malign influence, for, even as the little white fragments went floating down into the shadow, a new hope crept into his heart, and he went upstairs, arguing this way and that in a sudden fever of mental energy.  In the bedroom there was no need to light his lamp, and he started to undress in the broad path of moonlight that flooded the little chamber.  But after he had thrown his coat aside he forgot to go on with the process, and after many minutes he found himself leaning on the sill of the open window staring at the moon.

“Bed?” he muttered, in a strange excitement.  “Why should I go to bed?  I’m not sleepy.  I’m moon-struck, probably.  I’m full of crazy thoughts and fancies.  I don’t want to sleep, I want to walk—­and think.  I want to be out of doors.”

He found his way down the stairs, unmindful of the fact that he had left his coat behind, and stepped out into the warm fragrant night.  The road was a dark cavern, splotched with silver.  He turned away from it, seeking the open spaces of the garden, his shadow stalking beside him, purple-black in the moonlight.  The air scarcely moved.

The world was hushed and heavy with sleep.  Once, as he passed under the drooping branches of a tree, a bird stirred in its nest with a sleepy cheep.  He made his way around the house at the back, absentmindedly feeling for his coat pocket and his pipe.  He had left it upstairs, but no matter.  Why should one want to defile such a night as this with tobacco-smoke, anyway?  He stopped once under a pear-tree and wondered why his pulse raced so.

“What’s the matter with me?” he murmured.  “Am I going to be sick?  Or am I just plain locoed by that moon?  Well!”

He sighed, laughed softly at himself, and went on.  He was in the shade now, but beyond him was a moonlit space where stood the little arched gateway in the hedge.  He went toward it, his footsteps making scant sound on the soft turf; reached it; passed—­but no, he didn’t pass through just then.  Instead he stopped suddenly, drew in his breath and stared wonderingly into the startled face confronting him.

XVI.

For a little time, perhaps as long as it took his heart to pound thrice in wild tumult, they confronted each other in silence.  Then—­“Eve!” he cried, softly; and—­