When the door closed on Rupert the master pulled down the blind, and,
trimming his lamp, tried to compose himself by reading. Outside, the
“Great Day for Indian Spring” was slowly evaporating in pale mists from
the river, and the celebration itself spasmodically taking flight here
and there in Roman candles and rockets. An occasional outbreak from
revellers in the bar-room below, a stumbling straggler along the
planked sidewalk before the hotel, only seemed to intensify the rustic
stillness. For the future of Indian Spring was still so remote that
Nature insensibly re-invested its boundaries on the slightest relaxation
of civic influence, and Mr. Ford lifted his head from the glowing
columns of the “Star” to listen to the far-off yelp of a coyote on the
opposite shore.
He was also conscious of the recurrence of that vague, pleasurable
recollection, so indefinite that, when he sought to identify it with
anything--even the finding of the myrtle sprays on his desk--it evaded
him. He tried to work, with the same interruption. Then an uneasy
sensation that he had not been sufficiently kind to Rupert in his
foolish love-troubles remorsefully seized him. A half pathetic, half
humorous picture of the miserable Rupert staggering under the double
burden of his sleeping brother and a misplaced affection, or possibly
abandoning the one or both in the nearest ditch in a reckless access
of boyish frenzy and fleeing his home forever, rose before his eyes. He
seized his hat with the intention of seeking him--or forgetting him
in some other occupation by the way. For Mr. Ford had the sensitive
conscience of many imaginative people; an unfailing monitor, it was
always calling his whole moral being into play to evade it.
As he crossed the passage he came upon Mrs. Tripp hooded and elaborately
attired in a white ball dress, which however did not, to his own fancy,
become her as well as her ordinary costume. He was passing her with a
bow, when she said, with complacent consciousness of her appearance,
“Aren't you going to the ball to-night?”
He remembered then that “an opening ball” at the Court-house was a part
of the celebration. “No,” he said smiling; “but it is a pity that Rupert
couldn't have seen you in your charming array.”
“Rupert,” said the lady, with a slightly coquettish laugh; “you have
made him as much a woman-hater as yourself. I offered to take him in
our party, and he ran away to you.” She paused, and giving him a furtive
critical glance said, with an easy mingling of confidence and audacity,
“Why don't YOU go? Nobody'll hurt you.”
“I'm not so sure of that,” replied Mr. Ford gallantly. “There's the
melancholy example of Rupert always before me.”
Mrs. Tripp tossed her chignon and descended a step of the stairs. “You'd
better go,” she continued, looking up over the balusters. “You can look
on if you can't dance.”
Now Mr. Ford COULD dance, and it so chanced, rather well, too. With this
consciousness he remained standing in half indignant hesitation on the
landing as she disappeared. Why shouldn't he go? It was true, he had
half tacitly acquiesced in the reserve with which he had been treated,
and had never mingled socially in the gatherings of either sex at Indian
Spring--but that was no reason. He could at least dress himself, walk to
the Court-house and--look on.
Any black coat and white shirt was sufficiently de rigueur for Indian
Spring. Mr. Ford added the superfluous elegance of a forgotten white
waistcoat. When he reached the sidewalk it was only nine o'clock, but
the windows of the Court-house were already flaring like a stranded
steamer on the barren bank where it had struck. On the way thither he
was once or twice tempted to change his mind, and hesitated even at the
very door. But the fear that his hesitation would be noticed by the
few loungers before it, and the fact that some of them were already
hesitating through bashfulness, determined him to enter.
The clerks' office and judges' chambers on the lower floor had been
invaded by wraps, shawls, and refreshments, but the dancing was
reserved for the upper floor or courtroom, still unfinished. Flags,
laurel-wreaths, and appropriate floral inscriptions hid its bare walls;
but the coat of arms of the State, already placed over the judges' dais
with its illimitable golden sunset, its triumphant goddess, and its
implacable grizzly, seemed figuratively to typify the occasion better
than the inscriptions. The room was close and crowded. The flickering
candles in tin sconces against the walls, or depending in rude
chandeliers of barrel-hoops from the ceiling, lit up the most astounding
diversity of female costume the master had ever seen. Gowns of bygone
fashions, creased and stained with packing and disuse, toilets of
forgotten festivity revised with modern additions; garments in and out
of season--a fur-trimmed jacket and a tulle skirt, a velvet robe under
a pique sacque; fresh young faces beneath faded head-dresses, and mature
and buxom charms in virgin' white. The small space cleared for the
dancers was continually invaded by the lookers-on, who in files of three
deep lined the room.
As the master pushed his way to the front, a young girl, who had been
standing in the sides of a quadrille, suddenly darted with a nymph-like
quickness among the crowd and was for an instant hidden. Without
distinguishing either face or figure, Mr. Ford recognized in the
quick, impetuous action a characteristic movement of Cressy's; with an
embarrassing instinct that he could not account for, he knew she had
seen him, and that, for some inexplicable reason, he was the cause of
her sudden disappearance.
But it was only for a moment. Even while he was vaguely scanning
the crowd she reappeared and took her place beside her mystified
partner--the fascinating stranger of Johnny's devotion and Rupert's
dislike. She was pale; he had never seen her so beautiful. All that he
had thought distasteful and incongruous in her were but accessories of
her loveliness at that moment, in that light, in that atmosphere, in
that strange assembly. Even her full pink gauze dress, from which her
fair young shoulders slipped as from a sunset cloud, seemed only the
perfection of virginal simplicity; her girlish length of limb and the
long curves of her neck and back were now the outlines of thorough
breeding. The absence of color in her usually fresh face had been
replaced by a faint magnetic aurora that seemed to him half spiritual.
He could not take his eyes from her; he could not believe what he saw.
Yet that was Cressy McKinstry--his pupil! Had he ever really seen her?
Did he know her now? Small wonder that all eyes were bent upon her, that
a murmur of unspoken admiration, or still more intense hush of silence
moved the people around him. He glanced hurriedly at them, and was oddly
relieved by this evident participation in his emotions.
She was dancing now, and with that same pale restraint and curious
quiet that had affected him so strongly. She had not even looked in
his direction, yet he was aware by the same instinct that had at first
possessed him that she knew he was present. His desire to catch her eye
was becoming mingled with a certain dread, as if in a single interchange
of glances the illusions of the moment would either vanish utterly or
become irrevocably fixed. He forced himself, when the set was finished,
to turn away, partly to avoid contact with some acquaintances who had
drifted before him, and whom politeness would have obliged him to ask to
dance, and partly to collect his thoughts. He determined to make a tour
of the rooms and then go quietly home. Those who recognized him made
way for him with passive curiosity; the middle-aged and older adding a
confidential sympathy and equality that positively irritated him. For an
instant he had an idea of seeking out Mrs. Tripp and claiming her as a
partner, merely to show her that he danced.
He had nearly made the circuit of the room when he was surprised by the
first strains of a waltz. Waltzing was not a strong feature of Indian
Spring festivity, partly that the Church people had serious doubts if
David's saltatory performances before the Ark included “round dances,”
and partly that the young had not yet mastered its difficulties. When he
yielded to his impulse to look again at the dancers he found that only
three or four couples had been bold enough to take the floor. Cressy
McKinstry and her former partner were one of them. In his present
exaltation he was not astonished to find that she had evidently picked
up the art in her late visit, and was now waltzing with quiet grace
and precision, but he was surprised that her partner was far from being
equally perfect, and that after a few turns she stopped and smilingly
disengaged her waist from his arm. As she stepped back she turned with
unerring instinct to that part of the room where the master stood, and
raised her eyes through the multitude of admiring faces to his. Their
eyes met in an isolation as supreme as if they had been alone. It was an
attraction the more dangerous because unformulated--a possession without
previous pledge, promise, or even intention--a love that did not require
to be “made.”
He approached her quietly and even more coolly than he thought possible.
“Will you allow me a trial?” he asked.
She looked in his face, and as if she had not heard the question but was
following her own thought, said, “I knew you would come; I saw you when
you first came in.” Without another word she put her hand in his, and
as if it were part of an instinctive action of drawing closer to him,
caught with her advancing foot the accent of the waltz, and the next
moment the room seemed to slip away from them into whirling space.
The whole thing had passed so rapidly from the moment he approached
her to the first graceful swing of her full skirt at his side, that it
seemed to him almost like the embrace of a lovers' meeting. He had
often been as near her before, had stood at her side at school, and even
leaned over her desk, but always with an irritated instinct of reserve
that had equally affected her, and which he now understood. With her
conscious but pale face so near his own, with the faint odor of her hair
clinging to her, and with the sweet confusion of the half lingering,
half withheld contact of her hand and arm, all had changed. He did not
dare to reflect that he could never again approach her except with this
feeling. He did not dare to think of anything; he abandoned himself to
the sense that had begun with the invasion of her hair-bound myrtle in
the silent school-room, and seemed to have at last led her to his arms.
They were moving now in such perfect rhythm and unison that they seemed
scarcely conscious of motion. Once when they neared the open window he
caught a glimpse of the round moon rising above the solemn heights of
the opposite shore, and felt the cool breath of mountain and river sweep
his cheek and mingle a few escaped threads of her fair hair with
his own. With that glimpse and that sensation the vulgarity and the
tawdriness of their surroundings, the guttering candles in their
sconces, the bizarre figures, the unmeaning faces seemed to be whirled
far into distant space. They were alone with night and nature; it was
they who were still; all else had receded in a vanishing perspective of
dull reality, in which they had no part.
Play on, O waltz of Strauss! Whirl on, O love and youth! For you cannot
whirl so swiftly but that this receding world will return again with
narrowing circle to hem you in. Faster, O cracked clarionet! Louder,
O too brazen bassoon! Keep back, O dull and earthy environment, till
master and pupil have dreamed their foolish dream!
They are in fancy alone on the river-bank, only the round moon above
them and their linked shadows faintly fluttering in the stream. They
have drawn so closely together now that her arm is encircling his neck,
her soft eyes uplifted like the moon's reflection and drowning into his;
closer and closer till their hearts stop beating and their lips have met
in a first kiss. Faster, O little feet! swing clear, O Cressy's skirt
and keep the narrowing circle back! . . . They are again alone; the
judges' dais and the emblazoning of the State caught in a single
whirling flash of consciousness are changed to an altar, seen dimly
through the bridal veil that covers her fair head. There is the murmur
of voices mingling two lives in one. They turn and pass proudly down
between the aisles of wondering festal faces. Ah! the circle is drawing
closer. One more quick whirl to keep them back, O flying skirt and
dainty-winged feet! Too late! The music stops. The tawdry walls shut in
again, the vulgar crowds return, they stand pale and quiet, the centre
of a ring of breathless admiring, frightened, or forbidding faces. Her
arms fold like wings at her side. The waltz is over.
A shrill feminine chorus assail her with praises, struck here and
there with a metallic ring of envy; a dozen all-daring cavaliers, made
reckless by her grace and beauty, clamor for her hand in the next waltz.
She replies, not to them, but to him, “Not again,” and slips away in
the crowd with that strange new shyness that of all her transformations
seems the most delicious. Yet so conscious are they of their mutual
passion that they do not miss each other, and he turns away as if their
next meeting were already an appointed tryst. A few congratulate him on
his skill. Johnny's paragon looks after him curiously; certain
elders shake hands with him perplexedly, as if not quite sure of the
professional consistency of his performance. Those charming tide-waiters
on social success, the fair, artfully mingling expectation with
compliment, only extract from him the laughing statement that this
one waltz was the single exception allowed him from the rule of his
professional conduct, and he refers them to his elder critics. A single
face, loutish, looming, and vindictive, stands on among the crowd--the
face of Seth Davis. He had not seen him since he left the school; he had
forgotten his existence; even now he only remembered his successor, Joe
Masters, and he looked curiously around to see if that later suitor of
Cressy's was present. It was not until he reached the door that he began
to think seriously of Seth Davis's jealous face, and was roused to a
singular indignation. “Why hadn't this great fool vented his jealousy on
the openly compromising Masters,” he thought. He even turned and walked
back with some vaguely aggressive instinct, but the young man had
disappeared. With this incident still in his mind he came upon Uncle Ben
and Hiram McKinstry standing among the spectators in the doorway. Why
might not Uncle Ben be jealous too? and if his single waltz had really
appeared so compromising why should not Cressy's father object? But both
men--albeit, McKinstry usually exhibited a vague unreasoning contempt
for Uncle Ben--were unanimous in their congratulations and outspoken
admiration.
“When I see'd you sail in, Mr. Ford,” said Uncle Ben, with abstract
reflectiveness, “I sez to the fellers, 'lie low, boys, and you'll see
style.' And when you put on them first steps, I sez, 'that's French--the
latest high-toned French style--outer the best masters, and--and outer
the best books. For why?' sez I. 'It's the same long, sliding stroke you
see in his copies. There's that long up sweep, and that easy curve
to the right with no hitch. That's the sorter swing he hez in readin'
po'try too. That's why it's called the po'try of motion,' sez I. 'And
you ken bet your boots, boys, it's all in the trainin' o' education.'”
“Mr. Ford,” said Mr. McKinstry gravely, slightly waving a
lavender-colored kid glove, with which he had elected to conceal his
maimed hand, and at the same moment indicate a festal occasion: “I hev
to thank ye for the way you took out that child o' mine, like ez she woz
an ontried filly, and put her through her paces. I don't dance myself,
partikly in that gait--which I take to be suthin' betwixt a lope and a
canter and I don't get to see much dancin' nowadays on account o' bein'
worrited by stock, but seein' you two together just now, suthin' came
over me, and I don't think I ever felt so kam in my life.”
The blood rushed to the master's cheek with an unexpected consciousness
of guilt and shame. “But,” he stammered awkwardly, “your daughter dances
beautifully herself; she has certainly had practice.”
“That,” said McKinstry, laying his gloved hand impressively on the
master's shoulder, with the empty little finger still more emphasized by
being turned backward in the net; “that may be ez it ez, but I wanted
to say that it was the simple, easy, fammily touch that you gev it, that
took me. Toward the end, when you kinder gathered her up and she sorter
dropped her head into your breast-pocket, and seemed to go to sleep,
like ez ef she was still a little girl, it so reminded me of the times
when I used to tote her myself walkin' by the waggin at Platt River,
that it made me wish the old woman was here to see it.”
Still coloring, the master cast a rapid, sidelong glance at McKinstry's
dark red face and beard, but in the slow satisfaction of his features
there was no trace of that irony which the master's self-consciousness
knew.
“Then your wife is not here?” said Mr. Ford abstractedly.
“She war at church. She reckoned that I'd do to look arter Cressy--she
bein', so to speak, under conviction. D'ye mind walkin' this way a bit;
I want to speak a word with ye?” He put his maimed hand through the
master's arm, after his former fashion, and led him to a corner.
“Did ye happen to see Seth Davis about yer?”
“I believe I saw him a moment ago,” returned Mr. Ford half
contemptuously.
“Did he get off anythin' rough on ye?”
“Certainly not,” said the master haughtily. “Why should he dare?”
“That's so,” said McKinstry meditatively. “You had better keep right on
in that line. That's your gait, remember. Leave him--or his father--it's
the same thing--to ME. Don't YOU let yourself be roped in to this yer
row betwixt me and the Davises. You ain't got no call to do it. It's
already been on my mind your bringin' that gun to me in the Harrison
row. The old woman hadn't oughter let you--nor Cress either. Hark to me,
Mr. Ford! I reckon to stand between you and both the Davises till the
cows come home--only--mind YOU give him the go-by when he happens to
meander along towards you.”
“I'm very much obliged to you,” said Ford with disproportionately
sudden choler; “but I don't propose to alter my habits for a ridiculous
school-boy whom I have dismissed.” The unjust and boyish petulance of
his speech instantly flashed upon him, and he felt his cheek burn again.
McKinstry regarded him with dull, red, slumbrous eyes. “Don't you go to
lose your best holt, Mr. Ford--and that's kam. Keep your kam--and you've
allus got the dead wood on Injin Springs. I ain't got it,” he continued,
in his slowest, most passionless manner, “and a row more or less ain't
much account to me--but YOU, you keep your kam.” He paused, stepped
back, and regarding the master, with a slight wave of his crippled hand
over his whole person, as if indicating some personal adornment, said,
“It sets you off!”
He nodded, turned, and re-entered the ball-room. Mr. Ford, without
trusting himself to further speech, elbowed his way through the crowded
staircase to the street. But even there his strange anger, as well
as the equally strange remorse, which had seized him in McKinstry's
presence, seemed to evaporate in the clear moonlight and soft summer
air. There was the river-bank, with the tremulous river glancing through
the dreamy mist, as they had seen it from the window together. He even
turned to look back on the lighted ball-room, as if SHE might have been
looking out, too. But he knew he should see her again to-morrow, and
he hurriedly put aside all reserve, all thought of the future, all
examination of his conduct, to walk home enwrapped in the vaguer
pleasure of the past. Rupert Filgee, to whom he had never given a second
thought, now peacefully slumbering beside his baby brother, had not gone
home in more foolish or more dangerous company.
When he reached the hotel, he was surprised to find it only eleven
o'clock. No one had returned, the building was deserted by all but the
bar-keeper and a flirting chambermaid, who regarded him with aggrieved
astonishment. He began to feel very foolish, and half regretted that
he had not stayed to dance with Mrs. Tripp; or, at least, remained as
a quiet onlooker apart from the others. With a hasty excuse about
returning to write letters for the morning's post, he took a candle
and slowly remounted the stairs to his room. But on entering he found
himself unprepared for that singular lack of sympathy with which
familiar haunts always greet our new experiences; he could hardly
believe that he had left that room only two hours before; it seemed so
uncongenial and strange to the sensation that was still possessing him.
Yet there were his table, his books, his arm-chair, his bed as he had
left them; even a sticky fragment of gingerbread that had fallen from
Johnny's pocket. He had not yet reached that stage of absorbing passion
where he was able to put the loved one in his own surroundings; she
as yet had no place in this quiet room; he could scarcely think of
her here, and he MUST think of her, if he had to go elsewhere. An
extravagant idea of walking the street until his restless dream was over
seized him, but even in his folly the lackadaisical, moonstruck quality
of such a performance was too obvious. The school-house! He would go
there; it was only a pleasant walk, the night was lovely, and he could
bring the myrtle-spray from his desk. It was too significant now--if not
too precious--to be kept there. Perhaps he had not examined it closely,
nor the place where it had lain; there might be an additional sign,
word, or token he had overlooked. The thought thrilled him, even while
he was calmly arguing to himself that it was an instinct of caution.
The air was quieter and warmer than usual, though still characteristic
of the locality in its dry, dewless clarity. The grass was yet warm
from the day-long sun, and when he entered the pines that surrounded
the schoolhouse, they had scarcely yet lost their spicy heat. The moon,
riding high, filled the dark aisles with a delicious twilight that lent
itself to his waking dreams. It was not long before to-morrow; he could
easily manage to bring her here in the grove at recess, and would speak
with her there. It did not occur to him what he should say, or why he
should say it; it did not occur to him that he had no other provocation
than her eyes, her conscious manner, her eloquent silence, and her
admission that she had expected him. It did not occur to him that
all this was inconsistent with what he knew of her antecedents, her
character, and her habits. It was this very inconsistency that charmed
and convinced him. We are always on the lookout for these miracles
of passion. We may doubt the genuineness of an affection that is
first-hand, but never of one that is transferred.
He approached the school-house and unlocking the door closed it behind
him, not so much to keep out human intrusion as the invasion of bats
and squirrels. The nearly vertical moon, while it perfectly lit the
playground and openings in the pines around the house, left the interior
in darkness, except the reflection upon the ceiling from the shining
gravel without. Partly from a sense of precaution and partly because
he was familiar with the position of the benches, he did not strike a
light, and reached his own desk unerringly, drew his chair before it and
unlocked it, groped in its dark recess for the myrtle spray, felt its
soft silken binding with an electrical thrill, drew it out, and in the
security of the darkness, raised it to his lips.
To make room for it in his breast pocket he was obliged to take out his
letters--among them the well-worn one he had tried to read that morning.
A mingling of pleasure and remorse came over him as he felt that it was
already of the past, and as he dropped it carelessly into the empty desk
it fell with a faint, hollow sound as if it were ashes to ashes.
What was that?
The noise of steps upon the gravel, light laughter, the moving of two or
three shadows on the ceiling, the sound of voices, a man's, a child's,
and HERS!
Could it be possible? Was not he mistaken? No! the man's voice was
Masters'; the child's, Octavia's; the woman's, HERS.
He remained silent in the shadow. The school-room was not far from the
trail where she would have had to pass going home from the ball. But
why had she come there? had they seen him arrive? and were mischievously
watching him? The sound of Cressy's voice and the lifting of the
unprotected window near the door convinced him to the contrary.
“There, that'll do. Now you two can step aside. 'Tave, take him over to
yon fence, and keep him there till I get in. No--thank you, sir--I can
assist myself. I've done it before. It ain't the first time I've been
through this window, is it, 'Tave?”
Ford's heart stopped beating. There was a moment of laughing
expostulation, the sound of retreating voices, the sudden darkening of
the window, the billowy sweep of a skirt, the faint quick flash of
a little ankle, and Cressy McKinstry swung herself into the room and
dropped lightly on the floor.
She advanced eagerly up the moonlit passage between the two rows of
benches. Suddenly she stopped; the master rose at the same moment with
outstretched warning hand to check the cry of terror he felt sure would
rise to her lips. But he did not know the lazy nerves of the girl before
him. She uttered no outcry. And even in the faint dim light he could see
only the same expression of conscious understanding come over her face
that he had seen in the ball-room, mingled with a vague joy that parted
her breathless lips. As he moved quickly forward their hands met; she
caught his with a quick significant pressure and darted back to the
window.
“Oh, 'Tave!” (very languidly.)
“Yes.”
“You two had better wait for me at the edge of the trail yonder, and
keep a lookout for folks going by. Don't let them see you hanging round
so near. Do you hear? I'm all right.”
With her hand still meaningly lifted, she stood gazing at the two
figures until they slowly receded towards the distant trail. Then she
turned as he approached her, the reflection of the moonlit road striking
up into her shining eyes and eager waiting face. A dozen questions were
upon his lips, a dozen replies were ready upon hers. But they were never
uttered, for the next moment her eyes half closed, she leaned forward
and fell--into a kiss.
She was the first to recover, holding his face in her hands, turned
towards the moonlight, her own in passionate shadow. “Listen,” she said
quickly. “They think I came here to look for something I left in my
desk. They thought it high fun to come with me--these two. I did come to
look for something--not in my desk, but yours.”
“Was it this?” he whispered, taking the myrtle from his breast. She
seized it with a light cry, putting it first to her lips and then to
his. Then clasping his face again between her soft palms, she turned it
to the window and said: “Look at them and not at me.”
He did so--seeing the two figures slowly walking in the trail. And
holding her there firmly against his breast, it seemed a blasphemy to
ask the question that had been upon his lips.
“That's not all,” she murmured, moving his face backwards and forwards
to her lips as if it were something to which she was giving breath.
“When we came to the woods I felt that you would be here.”
“And feeling that, you brought HIM?” said Ford, drawing back.
“Why not?” she replied indolently. “Even if he had seen you, I could
have managed to have you walk home with me.”
“But do you think it's quite fair? Would he like it?”
“Would HE like it?” she echoed lazily.
“Cressy,” said the young man earnestly, gazing into her shadowed face.
“Have you given him any right to object? Do you understand me?”
She stopped as if thinking. “Do you want me to call him in?” she said
quietly, but without the least trace of archness or coquetry. “Would you
rather he were here--or shall we go out now and meet him? I'll say you
just came as I was going out.”
What should he say? “Cressy,” he asked almost curtly, “do you love me?”
It seemed such a ridiculous thing to ask, holding her thus in his arms,
if it were true; it seemed such a villainous question, if it were not.
“I think I loved you when you first came,” she said slowly. “It must
have been that that made me engage myself to him,” she added simply. “I
knew I loved you, and thought only of you when I was away. I came back
because I loved you. I loved you the day you came to see Maw--even when
I thought you came to tell her of Masters, and to say that you couldn't
take me back.”
“But you don't ask me if I love you?”
“But you do--you couldn't help it now,” she said confidently.
What could he do but reply as illogically with a closer embrace, albeit
a slight tremor as if a cold wind had blown across the open window,
passed over him. She may have felt it too, for she presently said, “Kiss
me and let me go.”
“But we must have a longer talk, darling--when--when--others are not
waiting.”
“Do you know the far barn near the boundary?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I used to take your books there, afternoons to--to--be with you,” she
whispered, “and Paw gave orders that no one was to come nigh it while I
was there. Come to-morrow, just before sundown.”
A long embrace followed, in which all that they had not said seemed,
to them at least, to become articulate on their tremulous and clinging
lips. Then they separated, he unlocking the door softly to give her
egress that way. She caught up a book from a desk in passing, and
then slipped like a rosy shaft of the coming dawn across the fading
moonlight, and a moment after her slow voice, without a tremor of
excitement, was heard calling to her companions.