She was his—his! Such a night would never come again—could never come again—because this was the first. No thrust-and-parry, drooling calf-talk; no bids for sex-interest here. Youth, nature and night were stripped to their framework. For this were the worlds made and the constellations hung infinitely. For such was a soul given a maid and a man. For this had a cricket sung beneath these old gray boards for a hundred thousand years. Again the boy’s lips found the girl’s. Her left arm crept up his right shoulder and around his neck. Their lips clung together. “Oh, Natie!” she whispered. She had no strength. “Let’s stroll back toward home,” the boy suggested thickly. The old clock in the tower of the Universalist Church was striking three when they finally reached the Cuttner gate. In another hour the first streaks of warm dawn would bring the summit of Haystack Mountain into sharper silhouette. “Just once more, dear boy,” the girl whispered as she stood close before him in the hush of somnambulistic morning. Arms interlocked, once more Nathan kissed her. She bade him good-by in a whisper. She tiptoed up and on to the veranda. The door yielded. The Cuttner household still slept. She waved him a comradely farewell and slipped noiselessly inside. Nathan hurried through the deserted town and into Spring Street. There was no white signal in Edith’s window. The Forge house was weirdly quiet. From the other side the partition he could hear his father’s lumberous snoring, when he gained his bedroom. He undressed and slipped into an unmade bed as a trillion birds were beginning to awaken and hold tuneful conversation in a hundred thousand tree tops. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVIII ANOTHER CASE I June had come again. A class of eighteen girls, graduating from The Elms, were holding Commencement on the twenty-fifth. Commencement Week was Mardi Gras for Mount Hadley in a refined, dignified, academic way. While The Elms was chiefly a college-preparatory school, many of its graduates were going abroad, becoming débutantes, receiving no further schooling. So Commencement Week and especially Commencement Night was a gala time. The little tree-bowered, hilltop town overflowed with parents, relatives and guests. Music, lights, laughter and love were as extravagantly squandered as the wealth of Nature poured out for the sensual gratification of insatiable summer. And the Door of Life opened large on the world. Madelaine Theddon was among those graduating from The Elms with that Commencement. She had taken a course preparing her for college. What college and what lifework was coming after had not been decided. She hoped to reach a decision before September.