Then, indeed, after they returned to the hotel, she lost no time in going to her father beyond that which must be given to a long hand-pressure under the fresco of the five poets on the stairs landing, where her ways and Burnamy’s parted.  She went into her own room, and softly opened the door into her father’s and listened.

“Well?” he said in a sort of challenging voice.

“Have you been asleep?” she asked.

“I’ve just blown out my light.  What has kept you?”

She did not reply categorically.  Standing there in the sheltering dark, she said, “Papa, I wasn’t very candid with you, this afternoon.  I am engaged to Mr. Burnamy.”

“Light the candle,” said her father.  “Or no,” he added before she could do so.  “Is it quite settled?”

“Quite,” she answered in a voice that admitted of no doubt.  “That is, as far as it can be, without you.”

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Agatha,” said the general.  “And let me try to get to sleep.  You know I don’t like it, and you know I can’t help it.”

“Yes,” the girl assented.

“Then go to bed,” said the general concisely.

Agatha did not obey her father.  She thought she ought to kiss him, but she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him a tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself into her own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the moonlight, with a smile that never left her lips.

When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much greater than some moths, moving before her window.  She pulled the valves open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from above.  She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great central truth of the universe: 

“I love you.  L. J. B.”

She wrote under the tremendous inspiration: 

“So do I. Don’t be silly.  A. T.”

She fastened the paper to the thread again, and gave it a little twitch.  She waited for the low note of laughter which did not fail to flutter down from above; then she threw herself upon the bed, and fell asleep.

It was not so late as she thought when she woke, and it seemed, at breakfast, that Burnamy had been up still earlier.  Of the three involved in the anxiety of the night before General Triscoe was still respited from it by sleep, but he woke much more haggard than either of the young people.  They, in fact, were not at all haggard; the worst was over, if bringing their engagement to his knowledge was the worst; the formality of asking his consent which Burnamy still had to go through was unpleasant, but after all it was a formality.  Agatha told him everything that had passed between herself and her father, and if it had not that cordiality on his part which they could have wished it was certainly not hopelessly discouraging.