‘Oh, the “Spectator,"’ Wilfrid replied, rousing himself from absentness.  ’Yes, I had it in the summer-house just before dinner; I believe I left it there.  Shall I fetch it?’

‘It would serve you right if I said yes,’ admonished Mrs. Rossall.  ’In the first place you had no business to be reading it—­’

‘I will go,’ Wilfrid said, rising with an effort.

‘No, no; it will do to-morrow.’

‘May as well get it now,’ he said indifferently, and went out by the window.

That part of the garden through which he walked lay in the shadow of the house; the sky was full of moonlight, but the moon itself was still low.  A pathway between laurels led to the summer-house.  Just short of the little building, he passed the edge of shade, and, before entering, turned to view the bright crescent as it hung just above the house-roof.  Gazing at the forms of silvered cloud floating on blue depths, he heard a movement immediately behind him; he turned, to behold Emily standing in the doorway.  The moon’s rays shone full upon her; a light shawl which seemed to have covered her head had slipped down to her shoulders, and one end was held in a hand passed over her breast.  There was something in the attitude which strikingly became her; her slight figure looked both graceful and dignified.  The marble hue of her face, thus gleamed upon, added to the statuesque effect; her eyes had a startled look, their lids drooped as Wilfrid regarded her.

‘You have been sitting here since you left us?’ he asked, in a voice attuned to the night’s hush.

‘I was tempted to come out; the night is so beautiful.’

‘It is.’

He uttered the assent mechanically; his eyes, like hers, had fallen, but he raised them again to her face.  It seemed to him in this moment the perfect type of spiritual beauty; the brow so broad and pure, the eyes far-seeing in their maidenly reserve, the lips full, firm, of infinite refinement and sweetness.  He felt abashed before her, as he had never done.  They had stood thus but a moment or two, yet it seemed long to both.  Emily stepped from the wooden threshold on to the grass.

‘Somebody wants the “Spectator,"’ he said hurriedly.  ’I believe I left it here.’

‘Yes, it is on the table.’

With a perfectly natural impulse, she quickly re-entered the house, to reach the paper she had seen only a minute ago.  Without reflection, heart-beats stifling his thought, he stepped after her.  The shadow made her turn rapidly; a shimmer of silver light through the lattice-work still touched her features; her lips were parted as if in fear.

‘Emily!’

He did not know that he had spoken.  The name upon his tongue, a name he had said low to himself often to-day and yesterday, was born of the throe which made fire-currents of his veins, the passion which at the instant seized imperiously upon his being.  She could not see his face, and hers to him was a half-veiled glory, yet each knew the wild gaze, the all but terror, in the other’s eyes, that anguish which indicates a supreme moment in life, a turning-point of fate.