His hand touched hers; their fingers twined about each other.  “I know,” said Anna.  She, too, could have gone on forever, dreaming in the moonlight.  Noel . . .  Thomas . . . what was the difference?  “Don’t talk.  Look at the trees, up against the moon.  Look at my breath; there’s a regular fog of it.”

“Are you cold?” He bent to wrap the heavy blanket more snugly about her.  He wanted to say:  “You belong to me, and I belong to you.”  And at that moment, with all her heart, Anna wanted to belong to some one, wanted some one to belong to her . . .

“Thanks, Tom—­dear.”

The haywagon crossed the first rise, south of the village.  Below the road, a rocky field swept downward to the woods, pale green and silver in the moonlight; and beyond, far off and faint, rose Barly Hill, with Barly’s lamp burning as bright for all the distance, as if it hung just over those trees, still, and faint with shadows.

“See,” said Anna, “there’s our light.”

But Thomas did not even lift his head to look.  In the chilly, solemn, night air, he was warm and drowsy with his own silence, which being all too full of things to say was like to turn him into sugar with pure sorrow.  And Anna, her round lips parted with desire, waited for him to speak, and held his hand tighter and tighter.

“Starlight,” she murmured, “starbright, very first star I see to-night, wish I may, wish I might . . .”

“Sky’s full of stars,” said Thomas.

“Do you know what I wished?”

“Do I?”

“Don’t you?”

He looked at her in silence; awkwardly, then, she drew him down, until her lips brushed his cheek.

“Look at Elsie,” she murmured.  “Did you ever?”

But Thomas would not look at Elsie; not until Anna had told him her wish.  “Wish I may, wish I might . . .”

“Have the wish . . .”

But she would only whisper it in his ear.

Miles away, in Mrs. Wicket’s cottage, Mr. Jeminy sat dreaming, and rocking up and down.  He had come to keep an eye on Juliet, so that Mrs. Wicket could sit with Mrs. Tomkins, who was feeling poorly.  While Juliet, at his feet, played with her dolls, Mr. Jeminy gave himself up to reflection.  He thought:  “The little insects which run about my garden paths at home, and eat what I had intended for myself, are not more lonely than I am.  For here, within the walls of my mind, there is only myself.  And you, Anna Barly, you cannot give poor Thomas Frye what he wishes.  Do not deceive yourself; when you are gone, he will be as lonely as before.  Come, confess, in your heart that pleases you; you would not have it otherwise.  We are all lenders and borrowers until we die; it is only the dead who give.”

When Juliet was tired of playing, she put her dolls to bed, and settled herself in Mr. Jeminy’s lap.  There, while the lamplight danced across the walls, drowsy with sleep, she ended her day.  “Tell me a story.  Tell me about the big, white bull, who swam over the sea.”