A placid hour it was, as dusk grew deeper and more fragrant, and they leaned over the terrace rail to meditate on the lights springing out like laughing jests incarnate--reflected lights of steamers paddling with singing excursionists up the Hudson to the storied hills of Rip Van Winkle; imperial sweeps of fire that outlined the mighty city across the river. Walter was at peace. He spared her his swart intensity; he shyly quoted Tennyson, and bounced with cynicisms about "Sherbert Souse" and "the _Gas-bag_." He brought happiness to her, instead of the agitation of his kisses. She was not an office machine now, but one with the village lovers of poetry, as her job-exhaustion found relief in the magic of the hour, in the ancient music of the river, in breezes which brought old tales down from the Catskills. She would have been content to sit there for hours, listening to the twilight, absently pleating the coarse table-cloth, trying to sip the saline claret which he insisted on their drinking. She wanted nothing more.... And she had so manoeuvered their chairs that the left side of her face, the better side, was toward him! But Walter grew restless. He stared at the German yachtsmen, at their children who ate lumps of sugar dipped in claret, and their wives who drank beer. He commented needlessly on a cat which prowled along the terrace rail. He touched Una's foot with his, and suddenly condemned himself for not having been able to bring her to a better restaurant. He volubly pointed out that their roast chicken had been petrified--"vile restaurant, very vile food." "Why, I love it here!" she protested. "I'm perfectly happy to be just like this." As she turned to him with a smile that told all her tenderness, she noted how his eyes kept stealing from the riverside to her, and back again, how his hands trembled as he clapped two thick glass salt-shakers together. A current of uneasiness darted between them. He sprang up. "Oh, I can't sit still!" he said. "Come on. Let's walk down along the river." "Oh, can't we just sit here and be quiet?" she pleaded, but he rubbed his chin and shook his head and sputtered: "Oh, rats, you can't see the river, now that they've turned on the electric lights here. Come on. Besides, it'll be cooler right by the river." She felt a menace; the darkness beyond them was no longer dreaming, but terror-filled. She wanted to refuse, but he was so fretfully demanding that she could only obey him.