Yet even Severn's delightful style (more French, by the way, than English) could not keep sleep away from me for long. I closed my eyes at six o'clock or thereabouts, and when I opened them it was quite dark, though not late, because the bar was still lit up. Taplow laughed when I went in. "You was sleeping, sir," he said, "and I didn't see no reason to disturb you. The others are out--said they didn't want any supper. Yours is laid ready in the coffee-room.... Will you take beer or wine, sir?" Beer.... The coffee-room windows were wide open, and the night air, slightly cool, drifted in with waves of flower-perfume and moths that fluttered noisily round the lamp.... Beer, cold beef, pickles, bread, and a dig out of a huge Stilton.... Idyllic meal, almost (but not quite) sufficient to dispel all the fears that ever a human mind possessed. Afterwards I sat out in a deck-chair under the blue-black sky and smoked a cigar. It was past eleven; Terry and June would be back soon, no doubt. Perhaps they had driven somewhere in the car, and there had been a breakdown. Was the car in the garage? I was too lazy to go and look.... There was no moonlight; only the silver stars. The yellow glow from the coffee-room window died down slowly; Taplow was carrying out the lamp.... The wind breathing idly through the trees, and the scent of hollyhocks, and sleep-sleep-sleep again.... II Voices in the garden.... It was midnight, probably; it _felt_ midnight. The cigar in my hand had long ago gone out. On the lawn the heavy dew was glistening faintly; there was no light anywhere but starshine, and no sound anywhere but the voices. Terry's voice. I heard him say: "Everybody gone to bed, of course. I've got the key, though." And then, in answer, a whisper more to be felt than heard. "Oh, the lovely--_lovely_ night! ... Terry, can't we go for another walk?" That was June.... They had entered by the side-gate, and were standing, so far as I could judge, outside the back-door of the bar--perhaps thirty or forty yards away from me. He said: "_Now_? Why, it's long past midnight. Hilton will be sitting up for me." "Never mind--he won't care.... Oh, Terry--Terry--I feel so utterly miserable to-night--I don't want to go in at all." "We _must_, June. It's _too_ late to be out." Silence for seconds--perhaps for a minute altogether. And then: "Terry, are you going to take that job in Australia?" I started so suddenly that my chair creaked, and I almost wondered if they would hear. But no ... the sound was drowned in a tiny murmur that swelled like a tide through the whole garden--as if the trees and the bushes and the tall hollyhocks were all stooping to listen to the answer. It came. "June, I've told you I must. It's a good post, June--I can't afford to let it go. It wouldn't be fair to your father." "_He_ wouldn't trouble. I'm sure he wouldn't."