Just before ten o’clock he had arisen hesitatingly; she thought it was to take leave, but she sat waiting and trembling.  They had sat in the twilight and young moonlight all the evening.  Richard had checked her when she attempted to light a candle.  That had somehow made the evening seem strange, and freighted with consequences; and besides the white light of the moon, full of mystic influence, there was something subtler and more magnetic, which could sway more than the tides, even the passions of the human heart, present, and they both felt it.

Neither had said much, and they had been sitting there nearly two hours, when Richard had arisen, and moved curiously, rather as if he was drawn than walked of his own volition, over to the sofa.  He sank down upon it with a little cough.  Sylvia moved away a little with an involuntary motion, which was pure maidenliness.

“It’s getting late,” remarked Richard, trying to make his voice careless, but it fell in spite of him into deep cadences.

“It ain’t very late, I guess,” Sylvia had returned, tremblingly.

“I ought to be going home.”

Then there was silence for a while.  Sylvia glanced sidewise, timidly and adoringly, at Richard’s smoothly shaven face, pale as marble in the moonlight, and waited, her heart throbbing.

[Illustration:  “Sylvia glanced timidly at Richard’s smoothly-shaven face”]

“I’ve been coming here a good many years,” Richard observed finally, and his own voice had a solemn tremor.

Sylvia made an almost inarticulate assent.

“I’ve been thinking lately,” said Richard; then he paused.  They could hear the great clock out in the kitchen tick.  Sylvia waited, her very soul straining, although shrinking at the same time, to hear.

“I’ve been thinking lately,” said Richard again, “that—­maybe—­it would be wise for—­us both to—­make some different arrangement.”

Sylvia bent her head low.  Richard paused for the second time.  “I have always meant—­” he began again, but just then the clock in the kitchen struck the first stroke of ten.  Richard caught his breath and arose quickly.  Never in his long courtship had he remained as late as that at Sylvia Crane’s.  It was as if a life-long habit struck as well as the clock, and decided his times for him.

“I must be going,” said he, speaking against the bell notes.  Sylvia arose without a word of dissent, but Richard spoke as if she had remonstrated.

“I’ll come again next Sunday night,” said he, apologetically.

Sylvia followed him to the door.  They bade each other good-night decorously, with never a parting kiss, as they had done for years.  Richard went out of sight down the white gleaming road, and she went in and to bed, with her heart in a great tumult of expectation and joyful fear.

She had tried to wait calmly for Sunday night.  She had done her neat household tasks as usual, her face and outward demeanor were sweetly unruffled, but her thoughts seemed shivering with rainbows that constantly dazzled her with sweet shocks when her eyes met them.  Her feet seemed constantly flying before her into the future, and she could scarcely tell where she might really be, in the present or in her dreams, which had suddenly grown so real.