When Rowan went for Isabel, she was sitting with Professor Hardage. They were not talking; and her eyes had a look of strained expectancy. As soon as she saw him, she rose and held out her hand to Professor Hardage; then without speaking and still without looking at him, she placed the tips of her fingers on the elbow of his sleeve. As they walked away, she renewed her request in a low voice: "Take me where we shall be undisturbed." They left the rooms. It was an interval between the dances: the verandas were crowded. They passed out into the yard. Along the cool paths, college boys and college girls strolled by in couples, not caring who listened to their words and with that laughter of youth, the whole meaning of which is never realized save by those who hear it after they have lost it. Older couples sat here and there in quiet nooks--with talk not meant to be heard and with occasional laughter so different. They moved on, seeking greater privacy. Marguerite's lamps were burnt out--brief flames as measured by human passion. But overhead burnt the million torches of the stars. How brief all human passion measured by that long, long light! He stopped at last: "Here?" She placed herself as far as possible from him. The seat was at the terminus of a path in the wildest part of Marguerite's garden. Overhead against the trunk of a tree a solitary lantern was flickering fitfully. It soon went out. The dazzling lights of the ballroom, glimmering through boughs and vines, shot a few rays into their faces. Music, languorous, torturing the heart, swelled and died on the air, mingled with the murmurings of eager voices. Close around them in the darkness was the heavy fragrance of perishing blossoms--earth dials of yesterday; close around them the clean sweetness of fresh ones--breath of the coming morn. It was an hour when the heart, surrounded by what can live no more and by what never before has lived, grows faint and sick with yearnings for its own past and forlorn with the inevitableness of change--the cruelty of all change. For a while silence lasted. He waited for her to speak; she tried repeatedly to do so. At length with apparent fear that he might misunderstand, she interposed an agitated command: "Do not say anything." A few minutes later she began to speak to him, still struggling for her self-control. "I do not forget that to-night I have been acting a part, and that I have asked you to act a part with me. I have walked with you and I have talked with you, and I am with you now to create an impression that is false; to pretend before those who see us that nothing is changed. I do not forget that I have been doing this thing which is unworthy of me. But it is the first time--try not to believe it to be my character. I am compelled to tell you that it is one of the humiliations you have forced upon me." "I have understood this," he said hastily, breaking the silence she had imposed upon him.