Marcia’s reply to his note came several days later. Its brevity did not conceal an indefinable and disturbing reserve. She would see him, she wrote, when she returned. With the note was inclosed the proof of the golf report. Its margin carried a penciled note. “Can you not see that this only makes it worse?” Jeremy read his cherished report once more, and saw. It was a lie. CHAPTER VII LAKE SKOHOTA thrusts a long and slender arm past Fenchester to throw it cherishingly about a tiny island, cut off from the University campus and made part of it again by an arched bridge overhanging dappled waters. Willows bending from the islet’s bank weave their thousand-fingered enchantments above the dreaming shallows. The subtle spice of sedge and marsh-bloom blows from it to disperse its spell upon the air that whispers a never-finished tale of secrecy and sorcery to the trees. It is a place of witchery. The sheen of countless stars glowed above the bridge and wavered below it, as two figures emerged from the pathway and paused at the summit of the arch to lean and look down through the darkness at the blackly opalescent gleam of the waters. A canoe stole around the bend and slipped beneath them, the stroke of its paddles accentuated in cool, delicious plashes of sound as it entered the arch. “Another two,” said the soft and happy voice of a girl, rising to them; and a boyish voice answered: “The night is full of them.” The canoe merged with the darkness. The two figures on the bridge, silent, followed it with their blind speculations into an unknown world. From far across the open spaces of the lake came the music of women’s voices blended, which the night breeze hushed to hear; a modulation of wistful, minor strains: “In dreams she grows not older The lands of Dream among, Though all the world wax colder Though all the songs be sung.” The latter couplet was repeated, a haunting, yearning, falling melody, that suddenly swelled and rose into the splendid, fulfilling major: “In dreams doth he behold her Still fair and kind and young.” The taller figure on the bridge stirred from a dream. “That is your song, Marcia.” “Yes,” said the girl, a little away from him in the darkness. “I arranged it for them, to be sung so; in parts.” “You sang it the first day we really began to know each other.” “Very long ago,” she assented, with her serene gravity. “Two months, is it not?” “Or years. Or centuries. It does n’t seem to matter.” “I am glad they sang that to-night. For us,” she concluded, after the briefest of pauses. He put his hand over hers, which rested on the stone coping of the bridge. She did not stir nor speak. But it was his hand, not hers, that trembled. A heavy rowboat came lumbering down the reach, two students at the oars.