"Simply didn't pay, you know--not a penny in it. And why should there be? People don't want to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story. All young men think the same--green leaves, moons and stars and lots of symbols, you know--all good enough if they don't expect people to pay for it." "I think _Reuben Hallard's_ a fine book," she said, "and so are some of the others. After all, everyone doesn't want only a plot in a book." He looked at her with patronizing kindness. "Well, you see if your Mr. Westcott doesn't change. Every writer wants an audience whatever he may pretend, and the best way to get a audience is to give the audience what it wants. It needs unusual courage to sit on a packing-case year after year and shave in a broken looking-glass----" She looked round the table. Everyone was happy. The butler was fat and had the face of a Roman emperor, the food was very, very good, Nita Raseley and Roddy laughed and laughed and laughed-- Suddenly Rachel's heart jumped in her body. Oh! she was glad; glad that Roddy cared for her and would look after her, because otherwise she didn't know what violence she might suddenly commit, what desperations she might not engage upon, what rebels and outlaws she would not support-- What Outlaws! And then, looking beyond the thickly curtained windows, she could fancy that she could see one gravely standing out there on the lawn, standing with his one arm and his pointed beard and his eyes appealing to be let in. Then there was an ice that was so good that Peter Westcott and Francis Breton seemed more outcast than ever. III After dinner, when the men had come into the drawing-room, they all went out into the gardens. It was such a night of stars as Rachel had never seen, so dense an army that all earth was conscious of them; the sky was sheeted silver, here fading into their clouded tracery, there, at fairy points drawing the dark woods and fields up to its splendour with lines of fire. The world throbbed with stars, was restless under the glory of them--God walked in all gardens that night. At first Nita Raseley, Monty Carfax, Rachel and Roddy went together, then, turning up a little path into the little wood that rose above the garden, Rachel and Roddy were alone. They found the trunk of a tree and sat down--Behind them the trees were thin enough to show the stars, below them in a dusk lit by that glimmering lustre that starlight flings--a glow that would be flame were it not dimmed by distance immeasurable--they could see the lawns and hedges of the garden and across the dark now and again some white figure showed for an instant and was gone. The house behind the shadows rose sharp and black. Roddy looked big and solid sitting there. Rachel sat, even now uncertain that she did not see Francis Breton in front of her, looking down, as she did, into the shadowy garden. "I hope," she said abruptly, "that you don't like Monty Carfax."