Mr. Smith looked upon these operations with delight. He liked to see Mr. Paragon at work in the garden. He was proud of his successful neighbour, and took real pleasure in his competence. Moreover, he delighted in Peter's lively and interesting pretences. He would himself have led the attack upon Peter's convoy had he been free of Mrs. Smith's critical and contemptuous survey from the back-parlour window. Once he had actively taken part, and Mrs. Smith discovered him on all fours among the gooseberries, whence he had intended to create a diversion in Peter's rear. The rational frigidity with which she had come from the house to inquire what he imagined himself to be doing effectually prevented a repetition. This afternoon there was a sharp encounter. This was a great moment in Peter's life owing to a brief, almost instantaneous, passage. Miranda met Peter's onslaught in her manly fashion, and soon they were locked in a desperate embrace. Suddenly Peter saw Miranda, as it seemed to him afterwards, for the first time. Her head was flung back, her cheeks crimsonly defiant, eyes shining, and hair scattered. For Peter it was a vision. He saw with uneasy terror that Miranda was beautiful. He had a quailing instinct to release her. It passed; but Miranda met the look that came into his eyes and understood. Who can say how softly and insensibly the change had been prepared? The books they had read; the strange couples that walked in the evening, curiously linked; the half-thoughts and surmises; queer little impulses of cruelty or tenderness that had passed between them--all were suddenly gathered up. Peter realised the difference in his life that this moment had made for him in the late evening when Mr. Paragon was showing him a transit of Jupiter's third moon. Astronomy was a passion with Mr. Paragon. Astronomy overthrew Genesis and confounded religion. He had picked up cheap a six-inch reflecting telescope, and very frequently on fine evenings he probed the heavens for uninspected nebulæ, resolved double stars, mapped the surface of the moon, followed the fascinating mutation of the variables. Peter was very soon attracted and absorbed into his father's pastime. It had a breathless appeal for him. Awed and excited, he would project his mind into the measureless dark spaces. It was an adventure. Sometimes they would rise after midnight, and these were the times Peter loved best. The extreme quiet of the hour; loneliness upon earth giving a keener edge to the loneliness of heaven; the silence of the sleeping street lending almost a terror to the imagined silence of space; the secret flavour which crept into the enterprise from the mere fact of waking while the world was asleep--all this gave to the situation, for Peter, an agreeable poignancy. Already he had discovered the appeal of Shelley, and he would repeat, pleasantly shuddering, passages of his favourite story: