“I don’t believe I understand,” observed the young lady, straight and proud as a wonderful princess in the moonlight. Bob gazed at her in rapture. Talk about the shoulders of that girl who had given him the cold shoulder at the dinner-table!—Miss Gwendoline’s shoulders were a thousand times superior; they would cause any sculptor to rave. Their plastic beauty was that of the purest marble in that pure light. And that pure, perfect face, likewise bathed in the celestial flood of light—until now, never had he quite realized what he had lost, in losing her. “But never mind about explaining,” went on the vision, apropos of Bob’s Olympian, village-blacksmith remark. “I didn’t come to discuss generalities.” “Of course not,” assented Bob eagerly. The music from the house now sounded suspiciously like a trot. Miss Gerald saw, though indistinctly, a face look out of the door. It might have been the little dark thing peering around for Bob, for she was quite capable of doing that. Bob didn’t notice her—if it were she. He had eyes for but one. He was worshiping in that distant, eager, hungry, lost-soul kind of a way. Miss Gerald’s glance returned to Bob. “Will you be so good as to take a turn or two about the garden with me?” she said in a calm, if hard and matter-of-fact tone. A number of people were now approaching from the other end of the broad, partially-enclosed space and Miss Gerald had observed them. “Will I?” Bob’s accents expressed more eloquently than words how he felt about complying with that request. Would a man dying of thirst drink a goblet of cool, sparkling spring-water? Would a miser refuse gold? Or a canine a bone? “Will I?” repeated Bob, ecstatically, and threw back his shoulders. Thus men go forth to conquer. He did not realize how unique he was at the moment, for he was quite swept away. The girl cast on him a quick enigmatic glance, then led the way. Sometimes his eyes turned to the stars and sometimes toward her as they moved along. In the latter instance, they were almost proprietary, as if he knew she ought to belong to him, though she never would. The stars seemed to say she was made for him, the breeze to whisper it. Of course, he hadn’t really any right to act “proprietary”; it was taking a certain poetic license with the situation. Once Miss Gerald caught that proprietary look and into the still depths of her own gaze sprang an expression of wonder. But it didn’t linger; her eyes became once more coldly, proudly assured. Bob didn’t ask whither she was leading him, or what fate had in store for him. Sufficient unto the present moment was the happiness thereof! A fool’s paradise is better than no paradise at all. He didn’t stop now to consider that he might be playing with verity when he hugged to his breast an illusory joy.