his knees to grope among the shadows, and, doing so, he touched
something warm and soft and yielding.

But it wasn't an owl. He must have touched her very lightly, for
even then she did not wake. She lay there with her head upon her
arm. And now close to her, his eyes growing used to the shadows, he
saw her quite plainly, the wonder of the parted lips, the gleam of
the white limbs beneath their flimsy covering.

Of course, what he ought to have done was to have risen gently and
moved away. Then he could have coughed. And if that did not wake
her he might have touched her lightly, say, on the shoulder, and
have called to her, first softly, then a little louder,
"Mademoiselle," or "Mon enfant." Even better, he might have stolen
away on tiptoe and left her there sleeping.

This idea does not seem to have occurred to him. One makes the
excuse for him that he was but three-and-twenty, that, framed in the
purple moonlight, she seemed to him the most beautiful creature his
eyes had ever seen. And then there was the brooding mystery of it
all, that atmosphere of far-off primeval times from which the roots
of life still draw their sap. One takes it he forgot that he was
Flight Commander Raffleton, officer and gentleman; forgot the proper
etiquette applying to the case of ladies found sleeping upon lonely
moors without a chaperon. Greater still, the possibility that he
never thought of anything at all, but, just impelled by a power
beyond himself, bent down and kissed her.

Not a platonic kiss upon the brow, not a brotherly kiss upon the
cheek, but a kiss full upon the parted lips, a kiss of worship and