"Oh! just because they are rare practice, I suppose. But listen, or our tale will be cut off short, as I see Santonio is about to play." "Oh, make haste then, pray!" And she resumed in a vein more lively. "The whole day I had worked, and at evening I went out. The sunshine had broken from dark, moist clouds all over those hills. The first steep I climbed was profusely covered with honeysuckle, and the rosy gold of the clusters, intermixed with the heather, just there a perfect surface, pleased me so much that I gathered more than I could well hold in both my arms. Victorine was just coming out,--that is, my handmaid,--and I returned past her to leave my flowers at home. It struck me first to throw them over the palings upon the little lawn, but second thoughts determined me to carry them in-doors for a sketch, or something. I got into my parlor by the glass door, and flung them all, fresh as they were, and glimmering with rain-drops, upon the music-stand of the pianoforte. I cannot tell you why I did it, but so it was; and I had a fancy that they would be choice companions for those quaint studies which yet lay open upon the desk. "In that lone place, such was its beauty and its virtue, we never feared to leave the windows open or the doors all night unlocked; and I think it very possible I may have left the little gate of the front garden swinging after me, for Victorine always latched it, as she came last. "At all events, I found her on the top of the honeysuckle height, carrying a camp-stool and looking very tired. The camp-stool was for her, as I always reposed on the grass, wrapped in a veritable tartan. And this night I reposed a good deal to make a flying sunset sketch. Then I stayed to find fault with my dry earth and wooden sky, and the heather with neither gold nor bloom upon it; then to watch the shadows creep up the hill, and then the moon, and then the lights in the valley, till it was just nine o'clock. Slowly strolling home, I met nobody except a shadow,--that is to say, as I was moving no faster myself than a snail, I suddenly saw a long figure upon the ground flit by me in the broad moonlight. "'It was a gentleman in a cloak,' said Victorine. But I had seen no person, only, as I have said, a shadow, and took no note. "'He had a sketching-book like Mademoiselle's, and was pale,' added Victorine. But I bade her be silent, as she was too fond of talking; still, I replied, 'Everybody looks pale by moonlight,'--a fact to be ascertained, if anywhere, on a moonlit moor.