Rita, who had been reading yesterday’s paper by the lamplight which streamed over her shoulder from the open parlour-window, sighed, stifled a yawn, laid the paper aside, and drew her pretty wrap around her shoulders.

“It’s absurd,” she said, plaintively, “but in this place I become horribly sleepy by nine o’clock.  You won’t mind if I go up, will you?”

“Not if you feel that way about it,” he said, smiling.

“Oh, Rita!” said Valerie, reproachfully, “I thought we were going to row Louis about on the stump-pond!”

“I am too sleepy; I’d merely fall overboard,” said Rita, simply, gathering up her bonbons.  “Louis, you’ll forgive me, won’t you?  I don’t understand why, but that child never sleeps.”

They rose to bid her good night.  Valerie’s finger tips rested a moment on Neville’s sleeve in a light gesture of excuse for leaving him and of promise to return.  Then she went away with Rita.

When she returned, the piazza was deserted except for Neville, who stood on the steps smoking and looking out across the misty waste.

“I usually go up with Rita,” she said.  “Rita is a dear.  But do you know, I believe she is not a particularly happy girl.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why....  After all, such a life—­hers and mine—­is only happy if you make it so....  And I don’t believe she tries to make it so.  Perhaps she doesn’t care.  She is very young—­and very pretty—­too young and pretty to be so indifferent—­so tired.”

She stood on the step behind and above him, looking down at his back and his well-set shoulders.  They were inviting, those firm, broad, young shoulders of his; and she laid both hands on them.

“Shall I row you about in the flat-boat, Louis?”

“I’ll do the paddling—­”

“Not by any means.  I like to row, if you please.  I have cold cream and a pair of gloves, so that I shall acquire no blisters.”

They walked together out to the road and along it, she holding to her skirts and his arm, until the star-lit pond came into view.

Afloat in the ancient, weedy craft he watched her slender strength mastering the clumsy oars—­watched her, idly charmed with her beauty and the quaint, childish pleasure that she took in manoeuvring among the shoreward lily pads and stumps till clear water was reached and the little misty wavelets came slap! slap! against the bow.

“If you were Querida you’d sing in an exceedingly agreeable tenor,” she observed.

“Not being Querida, and labouring further under the disadvantage of a barytone, I won’t,” he said.

“Please, Louis.”

“Oh, very well—­if you feel as romantic as that.”  And he began to sing: 

  “My wife’s gone to the country,
          Hurrah!  Hurrah!”

“Louis!  Stop it!  Do you know you are positively corrupt to do such a thing at such a time as this?”

“Well, it’s all I know, Valerie—­”