She gave a little gasp. "I don't believe there are violets in any woods
to-night," she faltered.
Even as she spoke we heard a swish and a crackle ahead of us and Sagner
came running back. "Let's go round the other way," he insisted.
"I won't go round the other way," said Madge Hubert. "How perfectly
absurd! What's the matter?"
Even as she argued we stepped out into the open clearing and met Harold
Lennart and "Little Sister" singing their way home hand in hand through
the witching night. For an instant our jovial greetings parried
together, and then we passed. Not till we had reached Madge Hubert's
doorstep did I lose utterly the wonderful lilting echo of that young
contralto voice with the man's older tenor ringing in and out of it like
a shimmery silver lining.
Ten minutes later in Sagner's cluttered workroom we two men sat and
stared through our pipe-smoke into each other's evasive eyes.
"Madge didn't--hesitate at all--to tell me a thing or two to-night, did
she?" Sagner began at last, gruffly.
I smiled. The relaxation made me feel as though my mouth had really got
a chance at last to sit down.
"Am I so very old?" persisted Sagner. "I'm not forty-five."