His resentful tone, even more than his words, dismissed her, but she left him without apparent grievance, saying quietly, “I will send August.”

LXVII.

Agatha did not come down to supper with Burnamy.  She asked August, when she gave him her father’s order, to have a cup of tea sent to her room, where, when it came, she remained thinking so long that it was rather tepid by the time she drank it.

Then she went to her window, and looked out, first above and next below.  Above, the moon was hanging over the gardened hollow before the Museum with the airy lightness of an American moon.  Below was Burnamy behind the tubbed evergreens, sitting tilted in his chair against the house wall, with the spark of his cigar fainting and flashing like an American firefly.  Agatha went down to the door, after a little delay, and seemed surprised to find him there; at least she said, “Oh!” in a tone of surprise.

Burnamy stood up, and answered, “Nice night.”

“Beautiful!” she breathed.  “I didn’t suppose the sky in Germany could ever be so clear.”

“It seems to be doing its best.”

“The flowers over there look like ghosts in the light,” she said dreamily.

“They’re not.  Don’t you want to get your hat and wrap, and go over and expose the fraud?”

“Oh,” she answered, as if it were merely a question of the hat and wrap, “I have them.”

They sauntered through the garden walks for a while, long enough to have ascertained that there was not a veridical phantom among the flowers, if they had been looking, and then when they came to their accustomed seat, they sat down, and she said, “I don’t know that I’ve seen the moon so clear since we left Carlsbad.”  At the last word his heart gave a jump that seemed to lodge it in his throat and kept him from speaking, so that she could resume without interruption, “I’ve got something of yours, that you left at the Posthof.  The girl that broke the dishes found it, and Lili gave it to Mrs. March for you.”  This did not account for Agatha’s having the thing, whatever it was; but when she took a handkerchief from her belt, and put out her hand with it toward him, he seemed to find that her having it had necessarily followed.  He tried to take it from her, but his own hand trembled so that it clung to hers, and he gasped, “Can’t you say now, what you wouldn’t say then?”

The logical sequence was no more obvious than be fore; but she apparently felt it in her turn as he had felt it in his.  She whispered back, “Yes,” and then she could not get out anything more till she entreated in a half-stifled voice, “Oh, don’t!”

“No, no!” he panted.  “I won’t—­I oughtn’t to have done it—­I beg your pardon—­I oughtn’t to have spoken,—­even—­I—­”

She returned in a far less breathless and tremulous fashion, but still between laughing and crying, “I meant to make you.  And now, if you’re ever sorry, or I’m ever too topping about anything, you can be perfectly free to say that you’d never have spoken if you hadn’t seen that I wanted you to.”