She pointed to a place beside herself on the fork of a dry log under flowering hawthorn.  A pale shadowy blue centre of light among the clouds told where the moon was.  Rain had ceased, and the refreshed earth smelt all of flowers, as if each breeze going by held a nosegay to their nostrils.

Wilfrid was sensible of a sudden marked change in her.  His blood was quicker than his brain in feeling it.  Her voice now, even in common speaking, had that vibrating richness which in her singing swept his nerves.

“If you cry, there must be a cause, you know,” he said, for the sake of keeping the conversation in a safe channel.

“How brave you are!” was Emilia’s sedate exclamation, in reply.

Her cheeks glowed, as if she had just uttered a great confession, but while the colour mounted to her eyes, they kept their affectionate intentness upon him without a quiver of the lids.

“Do you think me a coward?” she relieved him by asking sharply, like one whom the thought had turned into a darker path.  “I am not.  I hung my head while you were fighting, because, what could I do?  I would not have left you.  Girls can only say, ‘I will perish with him.’”

“But,” Wilfrid tried to laugh, “there was no necessity for that sort of devotion.  What are you thinking of?  It was half in good-humour, all through.  Part of their fun!”

Clearly Emilia’s conception of the recent fray was unchangeable.

“And the place for girls is at home; that’s certain,” he added.

“I should always like to be where...”  Her voice flowed on with singular gravity to that stop.

Wilfrid’s hand travelled mechanically to his pricking cheek-bone.

Was it possible that a love-scene was coming on as a pendant to that monstrously ridiculous affair of half-an-hour back?  To know that she had sufficient sensibility was gratifying, and flattering that it aimed at him.  She was really a darling little woman:  only too absurd!  Had she been on the point of saying that she would always like to be where he, Wilfrid, was?  An odd touch of curiosity, peculiar to the languid emotions, made him ask her this:  and to her soft “Yes,” he continued briskly, and in the style of condescending fellowship:  “Of course we’re not going to part!”

“I wonder,” said Emilia.

There she sat, evidently sounding right through the future with her young brain, to hear what Destiny might have to say.

The ‘I wonder’ rang sweetly in his head.  It was as delicate a way of confessing, “I love you with all my soul,” as could be imagined.  Extremely refined young ladies could hardly have improved upon it, saving with the angelic shades of sentiment familiar to them.

Convinced that he had now heard enough for his vanity, Wilfrid returned emphatically to the tone of the world’s highroad.

“By the way,” he said, “you mustn’t have any exaggerated idea of this night’s work.  Remember, also, I have to share the honours with Captain Gambier.”