He had meant merely to pass the rectory without stopping; but as he turned into the slanting street at the foot of the twelve stone steps, he saw a glimmer of white on the terrace, and the face of Virginia looked down at him over the palings of the gate. Immediately it seemed to him that he had known from the beginning that he should meet her. A sense of recognition so piercingly sweet that it stirred his pulses like wine was in his heart as he moved towards her. The whole universe appeared to him to have been planned and perfected for this instant. The languorous June evening, the fainting sweetness of flowers, the strange lemon-coloured afterglow, and her face, shining there like a star in the twilight--these had waited for him, he felt, since the beginning of earth. That fatalistic reliance upon an outside Power, which assumed for him the radiant guise of first love, and for Susan the stark certainties of Presbyterianism, dominated him as completely as if he were the predestined vehicle of its expression. Ardent, yet passive, Virginia leaned above him on the dim terrace. So still she seemed that her breath left her parted lips as softly as the perfume detached itself from the opening rose-leaves. She made no gesture, she said no word--but suddenly he became aware that her stillness was stronger to draw him than any speech. All her woman's mystery was brooding there about her in the June twilight; and in this strange strength of quietness Nature had placed, for once, an invincible weapon in the weaker hands. Her appeal had become a part of the terrible and beneficent powers of Life. Crossing the street, he went up the steps to where she leaned on the gate. "It has been so long," he said, and the words seemed to him hideously empty. "I have not seen you but three times since the party." She did not answer, and as he looked at her closer, he saw that her eyes were full of tears. "Virginia!" he cried out sharply, and the next instant, at her first movement away from him, his arms were around her and his lips seeking hers. The world stopped suddenly while a starry eternity enveloped them. All youth was packed into that minute, all the troubled sweetness of desire, all the fugitive ecstasy of fulfilment. "I--I thought you did not care," she murmured beneath his kisses. He could not speak--for it was a part of his ironic destiny that he, who was prodigal of light words, should find himself stricken dumb in any crucial instant. "You know--you know----" he stammered, holding her closer. "Then it--it is not all a dream?" she asked. "I adored you from the first minute--you saw that--you knew it. I've wanted you day and night since I first looked at you." "But you kept away. You avoided me. I couldn't understand." "It was because I knew I couldn't be with you five minutes without kissing you. And I oughtn't to--it's madness in me--for I'm desperately poor, darling; I've no right to marry you."