him his love enthroned above all his lesser loves--a thing of heaven,
where they were of the earth--consecrated a great passion, to lift him
out of himself. He sat and smoked, spiritually bemused, his brain
running like a fountain with melodies of music and poetry, notes and
words that sang in his ears and murmured on his lips without his
hearing them. So a distant curlew thrilled him to a more ecstatic
melancholy with its call through the moon-transfigured world, and he
did not notice it. All the influences of the gentle night contributed
to his inspired mood, but Love was the first violin in that orchestra
under Nature's conductorship--Nature, whose hour it was, walking, a
god, in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day.

And here came Deb, gliding towards him by a path that he could not see,
holding her lace skirts tightly bunched in her nervous hands. Youth to
youth, beauty to beauty, man to woman, woman to man, the magnet to the
steel--they were just elements of the elements, for once in their
lives.

"How fortunate that I put on black tonight," thought Deb, as she
pursued her stealthy way at the back of bushes--"and something that
does not rustle!"

"How beautiful she was tonight!" thought Claud. "How a dark dress
throws up that superb neck of hers! I'll take her to Europe, and show
her to the sculptors and painters; but where's the hand that could
carve that shape, or the paint that could give her colour? I'll
have a London season with her, and see her snuff out the milk-and-water
debutantes. No milk-and-water about Deb--wine and fire!--and withal
so proud and unapproachable. That hulking brute imagines--but he'll
find his mistake if he attempts to cross the line. Beauty, passion,