“Nick,” cried Mary imploringly, “do hold your tongue.”

Lady Torridon looked from one to the other with serene amusement, and there was an odd pause such as generally fell when she showed signs of speaking.  Her lips moved but she said nothing, and ran her eyes over the silver flagons before her.

When the Maxwells had gone at last, and prayers were over, Chris slipped across the Court with a towel, and went up to the priest’s room over the sacristy.  Mr. Carleton looked up from his lamp and rose.

“Yes, Chris,” he said, “I will come.  The moon will be up soon.”

They went down together through the sacristy door on to the level plateaux of lawns that stretched step after step down to the dark lake.  The sky was ablaze with stars, and in the East there was a growing light in the quarter where the moon was at its rising.  The woods beyond the water were blotted masses against the sky; and the air was full of the rich fragrance of the summer night.  The two said very little, and the priest stopped on the bank as Chris stepped out along the little boarded pier that ran out among the rushes into deep water.  There was a scurry and a cry, and a moor-hen dashed out from under cover, and sped across the pond, scattering the silver points that hung there motionless, reflected from the heaven overhead.

Chris was soon ready, and stood there a moment, a pale figure in the gloom, watching the shining dots rock back again in the ripples to motionlessness.  Then he lifted his hands and plunged.

It seemed to him, as he rose to the surface again, as if he were swimming between two sides.  As he moved softly out across the middle, and a little ripple moved before him, the water was invisible.  There was only a fathomless gulf, as deep below as the sky was high above, pricked with stars.  As he turned his head this way and that the great trees, high overhead, seemed less real than those two immeasurable spaces above and beneath.  There was a dead silence everywhere, only broken by the faint suck of the water over his shoulder, and an indescribably sweet coolness that thrilled him like a strain of music.  Under its influence, again, as last night, the tangible, irritating world seemed to sink out of his soul; here he was, a living creature alone in a great silence with God, and nothing else was of any importance.

He turned on his back, and there was the dark figure on the bank watching him, and above it the great towered house, with its half-dozen lighted windows along its eastern side, telling him of the world of men and passion.