he paused in deep shade far enough away to see, over its upper veranda's
edge, the tops of its chamber windows.




X


SYLVIA SIGHS

The house was of brick. So being, in a land where most dwellings are of
wood, it had gathered beauty from time and dignity from tried strength,
and with satisfying grace joined itself to its grounds, whose abundance
and variety of flowering, broad-leaved evergreens lent, in turn, a
poetic authenticity to its Greek columns and to the Roman arches of its
doors and windows. Especially in these mild, fragrant, blue nights was
this charm potent, and the fair home seemed to its hidden beholder
forever set apart from the discords and distresses of a turbulent world.
And now an upper window brightened, its sash went up, and at the
veranda's balustrade Anna stood outlined against the inner glow.

She may have intended but one look at the stars, but they and the spiced
air were enchanting, and in confidence that no earthly eye was on her
she tarried, gazing out to the farthest gleam of the river where it
swung southward round the English Turn.

Down in the garden a mirthful ecstasy ran through all the blood of her
culprit observer and he drank to her only with his eyes. Against the
window's brightness her dark outline showed true, and every smallest