“What?  Who are you?”

And, below her breath, she answered:  “Nedda.”

His arms wrenched her away from the banister, his voice in her ear said: 

“Nedda, darling, Nedda!”

But despair had sunk too deep; she could only quiver and shake and try to drive sobbing out of her breath.  Then, most queer, not his words, nor the feel of his arms, comforted her—­any one could pity!—­but the smell and the roughness of his Norfolk jacket.  So he, too, had not been in bed; he, too, had been unhappy!  And, burying her face in his sleeve, she murmured: 

“Oh, Derek!  Why?”

“I didn’t want them all to see.  I can’t bear to give it away.  Nedda, come down lower and let’s love each other!”

Softly, stumbling, clinging together, they went down to the last turn of the wide stairs.  How many times had she not sat there, in white frocks, her hair hanging down as now, twisting the tassels of little programmes covered with hieroglyphics only intelligible to herself, talking spasmodically to spasmodic boys with budding ‘tails,’ while Chinese lanterns let fall their rose and orange light on them and all the other little couples as exquisitely devoid of ease.  Ah! it was worth those hours of torture to sit there together now, comforting each other with hands and lips and whisperings.  It was more, as much more than that moment in the orchard, as sun shining after a Spring storm is more than sun in placid mid-July.  To hear him say:  “Nedda, I love you!” to feel it in his hand clasped on her heart was much more, now that she knew how difficult it was for him to say or show it, except in the dark with her alone.  Many a long day they might have gone through together that would not have shown her so much of his real heart as that hour of whispering and kisses.

He had known she was unhappy, and yet he couldn’t!  It had only made him more dumb!  It was awful to be like that!  But now that she knew, she was glad to think that it was buried so deep in him and kept for her alone.  And if he did it again she would just know that it was only shyness and pride.  And he was not a brute and a beast, as he insisted.  But suppose she had chanced not to come out!  Would she ever have lived through the night?  And she shivered.

“Are you cold, darling?  Put on my coat.”

It was put on her in spite of all effort to prevent him.  Never was anything so warm, so delicious, wrapping her in something more than Harris tweed.  And the hall clock struck—­Two!

She could just see his face in the glimmer that filtered from the skylight at the top.  And she felt that he was learning her, learning all that she had to give him, learning the trust that was shining through her eyes.  There was just enough light for them to realize the old house watching from below and from above—­a glint on the dark floor there, on the dark wall here; a blackness that seemed to be inhabited by some spirit, so that their hands clutched and twitched, when the tiny, tiny noises of Time, playing in wood and stone, clicked out.