Her response was to say, irrelevantly, somewhat quaveringly, in a voice as near to tears as he could fancy her coming:  “I wish I hadn’t fallen out with Aunt Vic.”

“Why?  Would she help you?”

“She’s very good and kind—­in her way.”

“Why don’t you write to her?”

“Writing wouldn’t be any good now.  It’s too late.”

Another long silence fell between them.  The darkened windows of the house on the other side of the lawn began to reflect a pallid gleam as the moon rose.  Shadows of trees and of clumps of shrubbery became faintly visible on the grass.  The great rounded elm in the foreground detached itself against the shimmering, illuminated sky like an open fan.  Davenant found something ecstatic in the half-light, the peace, and the extraordinary privilege of being alone with her.  It would be one more memory to treasure up.  Silence, too, was a form of communion more satisfactory to him than speech.  It was so full of unutterable things that he wondered at her allowing it to last.

Nevertheless, it was he who broke it.  The evening grew chilly at last.  Somewhere in the town a clock struck ten.  He felt it would be indiscreet to stay longer.

“I’ll make a try for it, Miss Guion,” he said, when he had got on his feet to go away.  “Since you want me to see Colonel Ashley, I will.”

“They always say that one man has such influence on another,” she said, rising, too—­“and you see things so clearly and have such a lot of common sense....  I’ll walk down to the gate with you....  I’m tired with sitting still.”

He offered his hand to help her in descending the portico steps.  Though there was no need for her to take it, she did so.  The white cloak, loosely gathered in one hand in front, trailed behind her.  He thought her very spirit-like and ethereal.

At the foot of the steps his heart gave a great bound; he went hot and cold.  It seemed to him—­he was sure—­he could have sworn—­that her hand rested in his a perceptible instant longer than there was any need for.

A moment later he was scoffing at the miracle.  It was a mistake on his part, or an accident on hers.  It was the mocking of his own desire, the illusion of his feverish, overstrained senses.  It was a restorative to say to himself:  “Don’t be a damned fool.”

And yet they walked to the gate almost in silence.  It was a silence without embarrassment, like that which had preceded it.  It had some of the qualities of the silence which goes with long-established companionships.  He spoke but once, to remind her, protectingly, that the grass was damp, and to draw her—­almost tactually—­to the graveled path.

They came to the gate, but he did not immediately say good night.

“I wish you could throw the burden of the whole thing on me, Miss Guion,” he ventured, wistfully, “and just take it easy.”

She looked away from him, over the sprinkling of lights that showed the town.  “If I could do it with any one, it would be with you—­now.”