"Not even Peter!" She tried to say it gayly, but a quick sadness fell upon her as she rose and went with him along the path. The moon had gone into a cloud, and a breath sprang up. The night was cooler. That other still langour of too great emotion seemed like something generated by their souls, and dissipated when they had to come out of the world of their own creating. All her daily fears rose up before her in anticipation. She was again alien here in her own land, and Electra was unkind to her. But there was a strange confidence and strength in knowing this silent figure was at her side.
"Courage, playmate," he said, as if he knew her thought. "We shall think this night over, shan't we?"
"Yes. When"—her voice failed her.
"Every night," he said, with an unchanged assurance that amazed her like the night itself. "I shall be there every night. If you don't come—why, never mind. If you come"—his voice stopped, as if something choked it. Then he went on heartily, "The house will be there under the tree, the playhouse. Nobody will see it by day, you know. Nobody'll run up against it by night. But you've got the key. There are only two, you know. You have one. I have the other. And here's Peter."
The whistle had come nearer, clear and pure now like the pipe of Pan. Peter stopped short.
"Rose!" he cried. "Osmond! What is it?"
Some accident seemed to him inevitable. Nothing else could have brought about this meeting. Osmond answered, stopping as he did so, when Peter turned to join him.
"I'll go back, now you've come, Peter. We were taking our walks abroad. So we met. Good-night! good-night!"
It seemed a separate and a different farewell to each of them, and he walked away. Peter stood staring after him, but Rose involuntarily glanced up to heaven to see if the moon, out of her cloud now, would give again the radiant assurance of that other moment. She longed passionately for an instant's meeting even so with the man who had gone. Then an exalted calm possessed her. She and Peter were walking rather fast along the path; he had been talking and she was conscious that she had not heard. Now a name arrested her.
"Had you met him before?" he was asking,—"Osmond?"