"Joyce, Joyce! Let me be the grateful one," returns he. His voice is a mere whisper, but so fraught is it with passionate appeal that it rings in her brain for long hours afterward. Her eyes fall beneath his. She moves silently away. What can she say to him? It is with a sense of almost violent relief that she closes the door of her own room behind her, and knows herself to be at last alone. CHAPTER XVII. "And vain desires, and hopes dismayed, And fears that cast the earth in shade, My heart did fret." Night is waning! Dies pater, Father of Day, is making rapid strides across the heavens, creating havoc as he goes. Diana faints! the stars grow pale, flinging, as they die, a last soft glimmer across the sky. Now and again a first call from the birds startles the drowsy air. The wood dove's coo, melancholy sweet--the cheep-cheep of the robin--the hoarse cry of the sturdy crow. "A faint dawn breaks on yonder sedge, And broadens in that bed of weeds; A bright disk shows its radiant edge, All things bespeak the coming morn, Yet still it lingers." As Lady Swansdown and Baltimore descend the stone steps that lead to the gardens beneath, only the swift rush of the tremulous breeze that stirs the branches betrays to them the fact that a new life is at hand. "You are cold?" says Baltimore, noticing the quick shiver that runs through her. "No: not cold. It was mere nervousness." "I shouldn't have thought you nervous." "Or fanciful?" adds she. "You judged me rightly, and yet--coming all at once from the garish lights within into this cool sweet darkness here, makes one feel in spite of oneself." "In spite! Would you never willingly feel?" "Would you?" demands she very slowly. "Not willingly, I confess. But I have been made to feel, as you know. And you?" "Would you have a woman confess?" says she, half playfully. "That is taking an unfair advantage, is it not? See," pointing to a seat, "what a charming resting place! I will make one confession to you. I am tired." "A meagre one! Beatrice," says he suddenly, "tell me this: are all women alike? Do none really feel? Is it all fancy--the mere idle emotion of a moment--the evanescent desire for sensation of one sort or another--of anger, love, grief, pain, that stirs you now and then? Are none of these things lasting with you, are they the mere strings on which you play from time to time, because the hours lie heavy on your hands? It seems to me----"