For a long time they talked, so completely in concord that for the most part their voices were low and their sentences so incomplete that they would have sounded incoherent and foolish to other ears. They were roused finally by the appreciation that it had grown very late and a storm was brewing. Boyd rose, and going to the door, saw that the sky was deeply overcast, rendering the night as dark as in a far lower latitude. "I've overstayed my welcome," he ventured, and smiled at her answering laugh. With a trace of solicitude, she said: "Wait! I'll get you a rain-coat," but he reached out a detaining hand. In the darkness it encountered the bare flesh of her arm. "Please don't! You'd have to strike a light to find it, and I don't want a light now." He was standing on the steps, with her slightly above him, and so close that he heard her sharp-drawn breath. "It _has_ been a pleasant evening," she said, inanely. "I saw you for the first time to-night, Cherry. I think I have begun to know you." Again she felt her heart leap. Reaching out to say good-bye, his hand slipped down over her arm, like a caress, until her palm lay in his. With trembling, gentle hands she pushed him from her; but even when the sound of his footsteps had died away, she stood with eyes straining into the gloom, in her breast a gladness so stifling that she raised her hands to still its tumult. Emerson, with the glow still upon him, felt a deep contentment which he did not trouble to analyze. It has been said that two opposite impulses may exist side by side in a man's mind, like two hostile armies which have camped close together in the night, unrevealed to each other until the morning. To Emerson the dawn had not yet come. He had no thought of disloyalty to Mildred, but, after his fashion, took the feeling of the moment unreflectively. His mood was averse to thought, and, moreover, the darkness forced him to give instant attention to his path. While the waters of the bay out to his right showed a ghostly gray, objects beneath the bluff where he walked were cloaked in impenetrable shadow. The air was damp with the breath of coming rain, and at rare intervals he caught a glimpse of the torn edges of clouds hurrying ahead of a wind that was yet unfelt.