But a voice—­a tall figure—­interposed—­

“Lady Constance, let me take you into the garden?  It’s much nicer than upstairs.”

A slight shiver ran, unseen, through the girl’s frame.  She wished to say no; she tried to say no.  And instead she looked up—­haughty, but acquiescent.

“Very well.”

And she followed Douglas Falloden through the panelled passage outside the hall leading to the garden.  Sorell, who had hurried up to find her, arrived in time to see her disappearing through the lights and shadows of the moonlit lawn.

* * * * *

“We can do this sort of thing pretty well, can’t we?  It’s banal because it happens every year, and because it’s all mixed up with salmon mayonnaise, and cider-cup—­and it isn’t banal, because it’s Oxford!”

[Illustration:  Constance sat in the shadow of a plane-tree with Falloden at her feet]

Constance was sitting under the light shadow of a plane-tree, not yet fully out; Falloden was stretched on the grass at her feet.  Before her ran a vast lawn which had taken generations to make; and all round it, masses of flowering trees, chestnuts, lilacs, laburnums, now advancing, now receding, made inlets or promontories of the grass, turned into silver by the moonlight.  At the furthest edge, through the pushing pyramids of chestnut blossom and the dim drooping gold of the laburnums, could be seen the bastions and battlements of the old city wall, once a fighting reality, now tamed into the mere ornament and appendage of this quiet garden.  Over the trees and over the walls rose the spires and towers of a wondrous city; while on the grass, or through the winding paths disappearing into bosky distances, flickered white dresses, and the slender forms of young men and maidens.  A murmur of voices rose and fell on the warm night air; the sound of singing—­the thin sweetness of boyish notes—­came from the hall, whose decorated windows, brightly lit, shone out over the garden.

“It’s Oxford—­and it’s Brahms,” said Constance.  “I seem to have known it all before in music:  the trees—­the lawn—­the figures—­appearing and disappearing—­the distant singing—­”

She spoke in a low, dreamy tone, her chin propped on her hand.  Nothing could have been, apparently, quieter or more self-governed than her attitude.  But her inner mind was full of tumult; resentful memory; uneasy joy; and a tremulous fear, both of herself and of the man at her feet.  And the man knew it, or guessed it.  He dragged himself a little nearer to her on the grass.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you were coming?”

The tone was light and laughing.

“I owe you no account of my actions,” said the girl quickly.

“We agreed to be friends.”

“No!  We are not friends.”  She spoke with suppressed violence, and breaking a twig from the tree overshadowing her, she threw it from her, as though the action were a relief.