'Peter,' began Jane shyly. And Peter ceased twisting the silk cord of the programme round his finger, and they turned and looked at each other. 'Is it true?' he said at last, with a queer kind of wonder in his voice. 'Let us go into the garden,' he said. His instincts remained primitive, and just then this room was too narrow for all he felt, and it seemed to him that the large things of the night and the distant glory of the stars were the only environment that he could bear. Passers-by, had they been mean enough to pause and listen outside the sheltering yew-hedge near which they sat, might have questioned the poetry of their love-making, and have condemned an avowal of devotion punctuated by barbarous slang; but the silence that fell between them was full of tenderness and more easily understood than speech, and perhaps the moon--an inquisitive person at the best of times--as she peeped over the grey turrets of the house saw the dawn of a love as single-hearted and as genuine as many sentiments which have been more carefully analysed and described. These were two happy, light-hearted persons, without very much to recommend them except a certain straightforwardness of vision which abhorred, as by a natural instinct, circuitous or crooked things, a transparent honesty, and a simple acceptance of those obligations which race and good-breeding demand. At the present moment, out in the garden on the stone seat set in the embrasure of the high yew-hedge, they were oblivious of everything in the world except each other and the absorbing discovery of love. They were the last to hear the cry of 'Fire!' which rang out from the house, and they were still sitting undisturbed while men ran with hose and buckets, and a clamour arose in the stable-yard for more water, and a clatter of horses' hoofs could be heard as a groom galloped off for the nearest fire-engine. The yew-hedged garden where they sat was distant a long way from the house, and it was not until a heavy cloud of smoke rose up against the sky that Peter's attention was attracted, and he realized that the Norman tower was on fire.