That night the mate was surely lost.  The lonely feathered thing made us shiver with the weirdness of its sad notes.

Suddenly we remembered the lateness of the hour and our guest.  We took a short cut across the soft grass toward the house.

We turned sharply around a clump of bamboo and halted.  A few steps before us was Page Hanaford.  Seated on the edge of an old stone lantern, head in hands, out of the bitterness of some agony we heard him cry, “God in Heaven! How can I tell her!”

Zura and I clutched hands and crept away to the house.  Even then we did not dare to look each other in the face.

Soon after Page came in.  He gave no sign of his recent storm, but said good-night to me and, looking down at Zura, he held out his hand without speaking.

Now that I could see the girl’s face I could hardly believe she was the same being.  With flushed cheeks and downcast eyes she stood in wondering silence, as if in stumbling upon a secret place in a man’s soul, she had fallen upon undiscovered regions in her own.

When I returned from locking the door after Page, Zura had gone to her room.

In the night I remembered that not once had Page referred to his absence from the city.

Zura, Jane and I had not often discussed young Hanaford.  When we did, it was how we could give him pleasure rather than the probable cause of his spells of dejection.  But when I found Jane alone the next day and told her what we had seen in the gardens, omitting what we’d heard, she had an explanation for the whole affair.

[Illustration:  “God in Heaven.  How can I tell her!”]

“It is perfectly plain, Miss Jenkins.  Page has been disappointed in love.  I know the signs,” Jane said with a little sigh, brightening as she went on, “but that doesn’t kill, just hurts, and makes people moody.  I am going to tell Page I know his secret.  I know, too, a recipe that will soon heal wounds like his.  We have it right here in the house.”

“Oh!  Jane Gray,” I said, exasperated, “do cultivate a little common sense.  Now you run along and make us some beaten biscuit for supper by that recipe that you know is infallible, and do not add to Page’s burden whatever it is, by trying your sentimental remedies on him.”

XIV

WHAT THE SETTING SUN REVEALED

I heard Zura softly singing as she went about her work.  She sang more and talked less in the two weeks that followed our Thanksgiving celebration than ever before since I had known her.  In that time we had not seen Page.  In our one talk of what we had seen in the garden Zura simply remarked that she supposed what we heard Page say meant he dreaded to tell somebody of the loss of his fortune and family.  She lightly scoffed at my suggestion of anything more serious.  I prayed that might be true, but why his confusion and evasion?