“Don't say that!” she cried. “Don't say you are ashamed of it. Do you suppose I do not understand the dreariness it has been for you? Don't you know that I see it is a horror to you, that it brings back your struggle with those beasts in the dark, and revivifies all your suffering, merely to think of it?” Her turns and sudden contradictions left him tangled in a maze; he could not follow, but must sit helpless to keep pace with her, while the sheer happiness of being with her tingled through his veins. She rose and took a step aside, then spoke again: “Well, since you want to leave Carlow, you shall; since you do not wish to return, you need not.--Are you laughing at me?” She leaned toward him, and looked at him steadily, with her face close to his. He was not laughing; his eyes shone with a deep fire; in that nearness he hardly comprehended what she said. “Thank you for not laughing,” she whispered, and leaned back from him. “I suppose you think my promises are quite wild, and they are. I do not know what I was talking about, or what I meant, any better than you do. You may understand some day. It is all--I mean that it hurts one to hear you say you do not care for Carlow.” She turned away. “Come.” “Where?” “It is my turn to conclude the interview. You remember, the last time it was you who--” She broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her hands. “Ah, that!” she exclaimed. “I did not think--I did not mean to speak of that miserable, miserable night. And _I_ to be harsh with you for not caring to go back to Carlow!” “Your harshness,” he laughed. “A waft of eider.” “We must go,” she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night before his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet generosity; his thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that hand he had likened to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in his own. And as they had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them. A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago. “I care for only one thing in this world,” he said, tremulously. “Have I lost it? I didn't mean to ask you, that last night, although you answered. Have I no chance? Is it still the same? Do I come too late?” The butterfly fluttered in his hand and then away. She drew back and looked at him a moment.