“I do,” was the answer. “It’s the same valley by night as it was by day. Can’t you feel how warm and redolent it is?” “But it’s so strange.” “I love what’s strange.” “I feel as if something, someone mysterious, might come and seize us.” “I should like someone mysterious to come and seize me.” “Oh, Lychnis, you are dreadful!” There was no answer. Then, after a silence, Ruby spoke again in a breathless whisper: “Oh, look! There’s somebody under the trees.” A pause. “Silly! It’s only Quentin. How mad of him!” Lord Sombrewater’s voice broke in from somewhere: “Go to bed at once, you two.” Ambrose went out to the verandah in time to see the two silken forms vanish. But he was quite sure that Lychnis turned and waved to the dim figure under the trees. Her eyes shone. 18 Ambrose went down to the lake in the tremulous mists of daybreak. He pushed his way in waist-deep among reeds, noiselessly, to observe the habits of water-fowl. Presently, without surprise, for she had the same early morning habits as himself, he saw the mist-white figure of Lychnis, with her skirt gathered in her hands, on one of the many little islets of rock scattered along the shore. She was bending forward, parting the water-lily leaves, gazing intently into the depths. He liked to see her once again in her own clothes, unswathed, a slender, air-loving Lychnis. He whistled. She turned and waved—negatively, as it were—but after a minute she turned round again, and slowly began to make her way back, stepping and leaping and splashing from stone to stone, as if she walked on the water; and sometimes she swayed and balanced among the broad leaves, herself an unfolding white lily. She came to him in the reeds and took his hand. “I didn’t want to see you at first. I thought it was Fulke or someone. But you looked so funny, waist-deep in the reeds and all thoughtful, and I thought I’d come. Let’s go, a long way—at once, in case any of the others come. I want to go miles this morning, exploring. Shall we?” She was enchanting, in her slip of a dress and white stockings and delicate shoes. “How can you run and explore in shoes like those?” he asked. “Fast-running things don’t have big hooves,” she replied. “Quite true. Come on, then, Fawnsfeet.” “My skirt’s not very wide,” she said, stepping out. It was a very slight affair, a mere shift, caught in on her right flank, so that the movement of side and hip was seen, to give the eye an unsatiable satisfaction. And one observed the moulding of shoulders and bust, and the young mounds that, as one supposed, a lover should one day cup with his hands and put his lips upon—a thought to make a man such as Quentin swoon. And the torso is incomparable, Ambrose observed to himself. “I felt I couldn’t bear those other clothes any longer,” she explained—“except sometimes, to dress up. Ruby, on the other hand, likes them.” “She’s asleep?”