He didn't understand that; but he saw that she was nervous, and set himself to reassure her. He assumed his dryest tone, his most negligent manner. When she came downstairs from Lancelot, and after watching the card-players, fingering a book or magazine, drifted to the open window and stood or leaned there, absorbing the glory of the night--Urquhart left her, and pulled at his pipe. When she spoke to the room at large--"Oh, you stuffy people, will you never understand that all the world is just out here?" he was the first to laugh at her, though he would have walked her off into that world of magic and dream, straight from the window where she stood. He was a wild idealist himself, and was sure of her. But he must wait her good time. Often, therefore, she drifted out by herself, and he suffered damnably. But she never went far--he comforted himself with that assurance. "She has the homing instinct. She won't go without me; and she knows that I can't come--but oh, to be kissing her under those birches by the water's edge!" He was not the only one who was aware that she had flitted. Macartney was always intensely aware of it, and being by this time exceedingly fond, it tended to spoil his play. So long as Urquhart left her alone he was able to endure it. Then came an evening when, tending to the open door, she found Urquhart there before her. He had behaved so admirably that her fears were asleep. He acted with the utmost caution, saying just enough, with just enough carelessness of tone, to keep her unsuspicious. The boreal lights were flashing and quivering in the sky: very soon he saw her absorbed in the wonder and beauty of them. "A night," she said, "when anything might happen!" "Yes, it looks like that," he agreed. "But that is not what enraptures you." "What do you think enraptures me?" she wished to know. "The certainty," he replied, "that nothing will." She waited a while, then said, "Yes, you are right. I don't want anything else to happen." "You have everything you want, here in the house. Safe to hand! Your Lancelot in bed, your James at cards, and myself at the window. Wonderful! And you are contented?" "Yes, yes. I ask so little, you see. But you despise me for it." "God forbid. I promised you that you shouldn't repent this trip. And you don't, I hope?" Her eyes were wide open and serious. "No, indeed. I never expected to be so happy as this. It never happened to me before." She had no compunctions at all--but he was in the fatuous stage, drugged by his own imaginings. "That's good. Shall we go down to the water?" "I think we might," she said, not daring to look back into the room, lest he should think that she feared him.