He sat with his back to the moonlight.  On his left was Alice, who, as soon as Furrey took his departure, settled back in her willow chair in her former attitude of graceful ease.  On the right was Mrs. Belding, in her thin, cool dress of gauzy black.  Farnham looked from one to the other as they talked, and that curious exercise, so common to young men in such circumstances, went through his mind.  He tried to fancy how Mrs. Belding looked at nineteen, and how Miss Belding would look at fifty, and the thought gave him singular pleasure.  His eyes rested with satisfaction on the kindly and handsome face of the widow, her fine shoulders and arms, and comfortable form, and then, turning to the pure and exquisite features of the tall girl, who was smiling so freshly and honestly on him, his mind leaped forward through corning years, and he said to himself:  “What a wealth of the woman there is there—­for somebody.”  An aggressive feeling of disapproval of young Furrey took possession of him, and he said, sharply: 

“What a very agreeable young man Mr. Furrey is?”

Mrs. Belding assented, and Miss Alice laughed heartily, and his mind was set at rest for the moment.

They passed a long time together.  At first Mrs. Belding and Arthur “made the expenses” of the conversation; but she soon dropped away, and Alice, under the influence of the night and the moonlight and Farnham’s frank and gentle provocation, soon found herself talking with as much freedom and energy as if it were a girls’ breakfast.  With far more, indeed,—­for nature takes care of such matters, and no girl can talk to another as she can to a man, under favoring stars.  The conversation finally took a personal turn, and Alice, to her own amazement, began to talk of her life at school, and with sweet and loving earnestness sang the praises of Madame de Veaudrey.

“I wish you could know her,” she said to Farnham, with a sudden impulse of sympathy.  He was listening to her intently, and enjoying her eager, ingenuous speech as much as her superb beauty, as the moon shone full on her young face, so vital and so pure at once, and played, as if glad of the privilege, about the curved lips, the flashing teeth, the soft eyes under their long lashes, and the hair over the white forehead, gleaming as crisply brilliant as fine-spun wire of gold.

“By her fruits I know her, and I admire her very much,” he said, and was sorry for it the moment afterward, for it checked the course of the young girl’s enthusiasm and brought a slight blush to her cheek.

“I ought to have known better,” he said to himself with real penitence, “than to utter a stupid commonplace to such a girl when she was talking so earnestly.”  And he tried to make amends, and succeeded in winning back her attention and her slow unconscious smiles by talking to her of things a thousand miles away.  The moon was silvering the tops of the linden-trees at the gates before they thought of the flight of time, and they had quite forgotten the presence of Mrs. Belding when her audible repose broke in upon their talk.  They looked at each other, and burst into a frank laugh, full of confidence and comradeship, which the good lady heard in her dreams and waked, saying, “What are you laughing at?  I did not catch that last witticism.”