A gibbous harvest-moon was gazing down at them with its wry face when the two awoke to the fact that the hour was late and cold, particularly for a girl dressed airily in chiffon. Joan gazed ruefully at the wreck of her prettiest gown, limp with dew and crushed beyond recognition. She felt rather limp and crushed herself, though withal triumphant. One does not get engaged every night, and it was fitting that certain sacrifices honor the event. The lovers had little to say to each other, as the canoe slipped back down the whispering river under that gibbous moon. For once Eduard found no poetry to suit the occasion. Joan, busy with her tumbled hair, hoped and even prayed that she might be able to slip into her room unobserved. She hurried nervously out of the dark boathouse, despite entreaties to wait, and was half way to the house before he caught up with her. "Oh, hurry!" she whispered. "They've all gone--every light in the house is out! It must be after midnight. Ned, what if they've locked the door?" "They haven't. My sister knows we're still out--trust her for that!" "But suppose she's waiting up for us?--Oh, Ned, whatever shall I say?" "You might tell her, Beautiful," he teased, "that I've had you up under the beech-tree, kissing roses into your cheeks and stars into your eyes!--though I think any one who saw you just now might suspect that without being told." She turned suddenly and clung to him. Something of Joan's independence had already slipped away from her, now that she had some one to cling to. "Ned, she doesn't like me! How am I ever going to win her over?" "Kiss her," he suggested promptly. "Kiss her as you've been kissing me. It couldn't fail!" "Don't tease!" She lifted serious, wide eyes to his, and he saw that they were wet. "Don't you know that I shall never, never in all my life, kiss anybody else as I have kissed you?" Touched, he drew her closer. She looked just then singularly childish and confiding. "Dear little girl, that thought herself so grown-up!" he whispered, his cheek on her tumbled hair. When she stirred in his arms he still held her. "What's the use of hurrying now, Beautiful? The fat's in the fire--and who knows when we shall have another night like this, all to ourselves?" But she would not stay. She felt, obscurely, that they had been engaged enough for one evening. She found herself at last safe in her room--'safe' was the word in her mind--sitting on the edge of her bed, staring down at her ruined finery with eyes which did not see it. Her knees felt queerly weak under her, her lips were bruised, her cheeks and throat and arms burned still with remembered kisses--She said to herself, like the old woman with a shorn petticoat, "Can this be I?"