She clasped her hands in a delicious ecstasy. “I know, I know. But you know how foolish I am. I felt--oh, Bill, forgive me!--I felt that, if you had really cared, a way of sending me a message might have been found. Of course, it was impossible. And there was more than that. When we parted last week, I thought you seemed not to care very much--” “Oh, Margaret!” “I know, I know. I know now how foolish I was, but that is what I thought--and, Bill, it tortured me. I've not been able to sleep at nights. That is how I was awake just now.” “Margaret, I believe you're crying.” “I'm so--so happy now.” “Oh, so am I! Aren't you glad I came, Margaret?” She murmured, “Oh, Bill!”; gave him a smile that pictured her answer. Mutually they gazed for a space, drinking delight. Her thirst quenched, Margaret said: “Bill, those nights, those terrible nights when I have been doubtful of you, filled me with thoughts that shaped into a poem last night.” “A poem to me?” “About us. Shall I read it?--now that the doubt is all over.” He begged her read. She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful moon: “Our meeting! Do you remember, dear, How Nature knew we met? Twilight soft with a gentle breeze Bearing scent of the slumbering seas; Music sweet--'twas a nightingale, Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail-- Golden sky that was flecked with red (Ribands of rose on a golden bed). Ah, love! when first we met!” She paused. “It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest,” she whispered, “and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is the imagery of it--as it seemed to me.” Bill said: “And to me; a beautiful imagery.” She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: “Oh, it's nothing, really. You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has to set them down.” “One is merely the instrument,” Bill said. “Yes, the instrument.” She hugged the phrase. “The _instrument_. How cleverly you put things!” Bill disavowed the gift. Margaret breathed, “Oh, you do; I have so often noticed it.” Bill again denied. IV.