His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves, seemed to her as different from all other faces as the exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of him than that she could not be happy away from him. She needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness, his logic would have been powerless before that unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling. "I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly. Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips. "Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she followed him under the hanging clusters of early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table. Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner. "I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night." "Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of it. How can I keep it forever?" "Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few years I've got to cut out everything but hard work." "Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to enslave him.