Has led me—who knows how? To thy chamber window, Sweet!” The serenade died in a single long note. As if in answer to it there rose a flood of bird-music from beyond the arbor—jets of song that swelled and rippled to a soaring melody. She heard it, too, for the gracile fingers fell from the strings. She listened [Pg 229]a moment, with head held to one side, then sprang up and came through the door and down the steps. He hesitated a moment, then a single stride took him from the shadow. [Pg 230] CHAPTER XXVII BEYOND THE BOX-HEDGE As he greeted her, his gaze plunged deep into hers. She had recoiled a step, startled, to recognize him almost instantly. He noted the shrinking and thought it due to a stabbing memory of that forest-horror. His first words were prosaic enough: “I’m an unconscionable trespasser,” he said. “It must seem awfully prowly, but I didn’t realize I was on private property till I passed the hedge there.” As her hand lay in his, a strange fancy stirred in him: in that wood-meeting she had seemed something witch-like, the wilful spirit of the passionate spring herself, mixed of her aerial essences and jungle wildernesses; in this scented dim-lit close she was grave-eyed, subdued, a paler pensive woman of under half-guessed sadnesses and haunting moods. With her answer, however, this gravity seemed to slip from her like a garment. She laughed lightly. “I love to prowl myself. I think sometimes I [Pg 231]like the night better than the day. I believe in one of my incarnations I must have been a panther.” “Do you know,” he said, “I followed the scent of those roses? I smelled it at Damory Court.” “It goes for miles when the air is heavy as it is to-night. How terrible it would be if roses were intoxicating like poppies! I get almost tipsy with the odor sometimes, like a cat with catnip.” They both laughed. “I’m growing superstitious about flowers,” he said. “You know a rose figured in our first meeting. And in our last—” She shrank momentarily. “The cape jessamines! I shall always think of that when I see them!” “Ah, forgive me!” he begged. “But when I remember what you did—for me! Oh, I know! But for you, I must have died.” “But for me you wouldn’t have been bitten. But don’t let’s talk of it.” She shivered suddenly. “You are cold,” he said. “Isn’t that gown too thin for this night air?” “No, I often walk here till quite late. Listen!” The bird song had broken forth again, to be answered this time by a rival’s in a distant thicket. “My nightingale is in good voice.” “I never heard a nightingale before I came to Virginia. I wonder why it sings only at night.” “What an odd idea! Why, it sings in the day-time, too.” [Pg 232] “Really? But I suppose it escapes notice in the general chorus. Is it a large bird?”