He had gone out upon the terrace with his cigar when his mother had left him, and now he sat in the long chair among some very well-disposed cushions. It was a night that lent itself with all the seductiveness of an English June, not to thought, but to feeling. One could feel the earth throbbing with the sensuousness of the season, although the stars of that summer night were but feebly palpitating out of the faint mystery of their grey-blue canopy. He had started thinking, but he was soon compelled to relinquish it in favour of feeling. “If she were but sitting in that other chair--nay, why the other chair? Why should there not be only one chair between us?” He fancied her sitting where he sat, her head among the cushions--oh, that perfect head, with its glory of hair, shining like some of the embroidery of that satin cushion at his shoulder! He pulled up the pillow and put his cheek close to it. Oh, if only she were there! He would sit on the rest for her feet, and hold them in his hands and put his face down upon the arch of their instep. He had seen her feet that day when she had been watching the game, by the side of her friends, and he knew what they would be like to kiss. And then he would kneel by the side of the chair and put his head down to the cushion that was below hers, so that their faces--their lips--should not be far apart--not further apart than a finger’s breadth--sometimes not even so far. And they would be silent together, drinking deep of the delight of each other’s silence. For what would they have to talk about on such a night as this? And while he sat there, abandoning himself to the abandonment of Nature--that glorious Nature whose passionate heart was beating in everything under the stars of this June night--a nightingale began to sing out of the darkness of the shrubbery. He listened to it, feeling that that singing was the most complete expression of the passion of June. But the incompleteness of his life--sitting there alone, full of that longing which the nightingale could so interpret! Why was she not here beside him--in his arms?