Guy talked airily of what much more wonderful things he was going to write, and when he asked Pauline to meet him this very midnight on the river, she had to consent, because in the thought that he appeared to be drifting out of reach of her love she felt half distraught and would have sacrificed anything to keep him by her. The June evening seemed of a sad uniform green, for the blossom of the trees was departed and the borders were not yet marching in Midsummer array. There was always a sadness about these evenings of early June, a sadness, and sometimes a threat when the wind blew loudly among the young foliage. Those gusty eves were almost preferable to this protracted and luminous melancholy in which the sinking crescent of the moon hung scarcely more bright than ivory. The pensive beauty was too much for Pauline, who wished that she could shut out the obstinate day and read by candlelight such a book as Alice in Wonderland until it was time to go to bed. Her white fastness, rose-bloomed by sunset as she dressed for dinner, reproached her intention of abandoning its shelter to-night, and she determined that this should really be the last escapade. There was no harm in what she had done of course, as Guy assured her, and yet there was harm in behaving so traitorously toward that narrow white bed, toward pious wide-eyed Saint Ursula and Tobit's companionable angel. The languor of the evening was heavy upon all the family: Monica was the only one who had the energy to go to her instrument. She played Chopin, and the austerity of her method made the ballades and the nocturnes more dangerously sweet. Gradually the melodies lulled most of Pauline's fears and charmed her to look forward eagerly to the velvet midnight when she with Guy beside her would float deep into such caressing glooms. After Monica had played them all into drowsiness, Pauline had to wait until the last sound had died away in the house and the illumination of the last window had faded from the bodeful night that was stroking her window with invitation to come forth. Twelve o'clock clanged from the belfry, and Pauline opened her bedroom door to listen. She had put on her white frieze coat, for although the night was warm the wearing of such outdoor garb gave a queer kind of propriety to the whole business, and at the far end of the long corridor she saw herself in the dim candlelight mirrored like a ghost in the Venetian glass. From the heart of the house the cuckoo calling midnight a minute or two late made her draw back in alarm, and not merely in alarm, but also rather sentimentally, as if by her action she were going to offend that innocent bird of childhood. She wondered why to-night she felt so sensitive beforehand, since usually the regret had followed her action; but promising herself that to-night should indeed be the last time she would ever take this risk, she crept on tip-toe down the stairs.