“I know, dearest boy!”

The term overwhelmed him.  She heard him try to go on; he choked, glanced at her smilingly, and shook his head.  A second later he laid his face against her hands, and she felt that it was wet.

The clock in the Town Hall struck nine—­struck ten, and still they sat on, sometimes talking, sometimes staring up at the steadily beating stars.  Quiet fell upon Monroe, lights moved in the little houses and went out.  There was a little stir when the crowd poured out from the moving pictures:  voices, shouts, laughter, then silence again.

Suddenly Martie decreed their return to the house.  But the ecstasy of finding each other, again was too new.  They passed the dark old gateway to the sunken garden, and walked on, talking thirstily, drinking deep of the joy of words.

Hand in hand they went up the hill, and time and space might have equally been demolished.  That hill had seemed a long climb to Martie years ago:  to-night it seemed a dream hill, she and John were so soon at its little summit.

Below them lay the dark village and the furry tops of trees flooded with gray moonlight.  The odours of a summer night crept out to meet them, odours of flowers and dew-wet, sunburned grass.  The roadside fences were wreathed with wild blackberry vines that took weird shapes in the dark.  In the idle fields spreading oaks threw shadows of inky blackness.

Martie hardly thought of Clifford.  Across her spinning senses an occasional thought of him crept, but he had no part in to-night.  To-morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow, somehow, she must send John away.  But to-night was theirs.

Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other’s presence.  They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether they were grave, or whether Martie’s gay laugh and his eager echoing laugh rang out, the enchantment held them alike.

It was after one o’clock when they came slowly down the hill, and let themselves silently into the shadowy garden.  Martie fled noiselessly past the streak of light under Lydia’s door, gained her own room, and blinked at her lighted gas.

The mirror showed her a pale, exalted face, with glittering blue eyes under loosened bronze hair.  She was cold, excited, tired, and ecstatic.  She moved the sprawling Teddy to the inside of the bed, stooping to lay her cold cheek and half-opened lips to his flushed little face.  She got into a wrapper, her hair falling free on her shoulders, and sat dreaming and remembering.

Lydia, in her gray wrapper, came in, with haggard, reproachful eyes.  Lydia was pale, too, but it was the paleness of fatigue, and had nothing in common with Martie’s starry pallor.

“Martie, do you know what time it is?”

“Lyd—­I know it’s late!”

“Late?  It’s two o’clock.”

“Not really?” Martie bunched her splendid hair with a white hand under each ear, and faced her affronted sister innocently.