Miss Jocyln laughed frankly. She was of a nature far more impassioned than his, and she loved him; and she felt thrilling through every nerve in her body the prescience of what he was going to say; for all that, being a woman, she had the best of it now. "I am not at all fatigued," she said; "and I like it. I don't think balls are bores--like this, I mean; but then, to be sure, my experience is very limited. How lovely the night is! Look at the moonlight, yonder, on the sea--a sheet of silvery glory. Does it not recall Sorrento and the exquisite Sorrentine landscape--that moonlight on the sea? Are you not inspired, sir artist?" She lifted a flitting, radiant glance, a luminous smile, and the star-like face, drooped again--and the white hands took to reckless breaking off sweet sprays of myrtle. "My inspiration is nearer," looking down at the drooping face. "Aileen----" and there he stopped, and the sentence was never destined to be finished, for a shadow darkened the moonlight, and a figure flitted in like a spirit and stood before them--a fairy figure, in a cloud of rosy drapery, with shimmering golden curls and dancing eyes of turquoise blue. Aileen Jocyln started back and away from her companion, with a faint, thrilling cry. Sir Rupert, wondering and annoyed, stood staring; and still the fairy figure in the rosy gauze stood, like a nymph in a stage tableau, smiling up in their faces and never speaking. There was a blank pause, a moment's; then Miss Jocyln made one step forward, doubt, recognition, delight, all in her face at once. "It is--it is!" she cried, "May Everard!" "May Everard!" Sir Rupert echoed--"little May!" "At your service, _monsieur_! To think you should have forgotten me so completely in a decade of years. For shame, Sir Rupert Thetford!" And then she was in Aileen Jocyln's arms, and there was an hiatus filled up with kisses. "Oh! what a surprise!" Miss Jocyln cried breathlessly. "Have you dropped from the skies? I thought you were in France." May Everard laughed, the calm, bright laugh of thirteen years ago, as she held up her dimpled cheeks, first one and then the other, to Sir Rupert. "Did you? So I was, but I ran away." "Ran away! From school?" "Something very like it. Oh! how stupid it was, and I couldn't endure it any longer; and I am so crammed with knowledge now that if I held any more I should burst; and so I told them I had to come home; but I was sent for, which was true, you know, for I felt an inward call; and as they were glad to be rid of me, they didn't make much opposition or ask unnecessary questions. And so," folding the fairy hands and nodding her little ringleted head, "here I am." "But, good heavens!" cried Sir Rupert, aghast, "you never mean to say, May, you have come alone?"