She did not answer him. But out of the prolonged silence that fell between them a tree toad shrilled sharply somewhere over their heads. He turned and stared across the garden at the distant house front. It seemed less sinister, bathed as it was in its etherealized wash of light. But it depressed him. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” he said, with remorse in his voice. “It’s the most wonderful night I have ever known,” her small voice answered through the dusk. “It is to me, too,” he told her, conscious of some gathering tide which was creeping up to him, which was taking possession of him, which was carrying him along on its tumbling and racing immensities. “And it can never happen again,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “Why can’t it?” he demanded. “How can it?” she quietly countered. “But I intend to make it!” he cried. She sat back against the arbor railing, apparently startled by the passion in his voice. “I’d rather you didn’t say things like that,” she told him. “Why?” he asked. “I want you to be always wonderful to me.” “But I mean it,” he said, his voice shaking. She stood up with what seemed her first gesture of timidity. He could see her face, flower soft, in the ragged square of moonlight which fell across her shoulders. He rose to his feet and stood beside her, with his pulses pounding. Then in the silence he reached out for her hand and turned her about so that she faced him. “Don’t you see what it means to me?” he said, his face above hers in the uncertain light. She looked down at her imprisoned hand, but that was all. He leaned closer. Her eyes closed as he kissed her. “You must not do that if you don’t mean it,” she said almost abruptly and with a passionate intensity which startled him. “But I do mean it, so much more than I could ever put into words,” he cried, more shaken than he had imagined. “I love you.” Her hand went up to his shoulder in a gesture of helplessness. “Are you sure?” she exacted. “Are you certain?” she repeated, with a soft desperation which left her adorable. He took her in his arms and held her close as he murmured, “As certain as life!” He kissed her again, this time more appropriately, more masterfully. And with it a lifetime of repression went up in flames. “I love you,” she said, her grim Keswick candor once more asserting itself. “I’ll always have to love you, whatever happens.” She turned away from him a little and stared toward the shadowy front of the old manor-house. “I don’t care so much now what they say.” “Why should you?” he demanded, realizing how little he had thought of the world beyond that arbor. “This is my only home,” she told him, quite simply. “I can live here only by doing what is demanded of me.” “But when those demands are absurd?” “That doesn’t seem to have made much difference.” “But you’re—you’re a woman now, and you have your human rights.” “That’s easy to say,” she told him. “But my world’s been very different from yours.”