Presently Maud came back and put every depreciatory thought about herself to instant flight. There had been some mistake about a quadrille, she said, and her partner was not forthcoming, and so she had taken flight at once. It was so dull dancing with people one did not know; and would it not be nice if it was the fashion to dance only with one's friends? 'And now,' she said, 'do take me outside to look at the moon.' Maud was evidently bent on being kind and gracious; and Boldero, blushing to think what an idiot he had been making of himself, took her out into the balcony, where the Bachelors' industry had worked wonders with ferns and flowers and sofas poetically suggestive of a _tête-à-tête_ and all that an artistic Bachelor's soul dreams of as appropriate to balls. There lay the still valley at their feet--all its depths filled with motionless white clouds, that glistened in the moonlight like a silver lake. The twinkling fires of the hamlets opposite were one by one dying out of sight. The solemn pine-shade all around, wherever the moonlight could not pierce, made the rest of the picture seem ablaze with glory. Is there a sweeter, softer radiance in the world than the moonlight of the Himalayas? 'This is enchanting,' Maud said, in great spirits; 'how I should like to sketch it! Why should we not have a moonlight party? And you will do my sketch for me, will you not, Mr. Boldero? Let me get Mr. Desvoeux to arrange it; he is great at such things; and we can make him sing to us and play on his guitar, which he does delightfully, while we are drawing--would it not be delicious?' Boldero, in his heart, doubted the deliciousness of any programme in which Desvoeux figured as a performer. He had no time to reply, however, for all too soon--before, as it seemed, he and his companion had well established themselves--the quadrille had ended, and Maud's claimant for the next dance came bustling up; and Maud, who thought moonlight all very well but would not have missed a valse for the world, went gleefully away, smiling her adorer a kind farewell that sent him sevenfold deeper into love than ever.