"I thought you would be here," she said. "It is a night that draws one to it."
"It is a night for memories," he said quietly. "What bitter-sweet things they have become since we had war!"
"Yes;" and she sighed.
For a little time they spoke of the sorrows and the tragedies of their world; they talked of Oaklands, which would pass from her family because there was no heir; they played on the minor chords of life, and in their voices the melancholy elegy for beautiful things that had died found expression in their hushed and murmuring tones.
But they were young, and in the heart of youth there is always Spring; and the witchery of a moonlight night was calling to it. The minor strains trembled into silence, and the melody of hearts that are young took its place. She had deep-blue eyes that were never meant for tears, and he had a nature that responded to the beauty of life as an Æolian harp to the moods of the wind.
As men and maids have done for generations, they talked of themselves. (A dangerous topic when the moon is making fairy-rings upon the grass.) They traced their friendship from his first visit, and lightly touched on the weary hours when she watched by his bedside in France. They laughed, they sighed, and once their fingers touched by accident, and he felt a thrill as the hot blood rushed to his cheeks. He experienced a sudden resentment against her wild-rose coloring, the marble fullness of her throat, and the luxury of silky, brown hair which held a vagrant moonbeam in a lingering caress. It was a protest of the brain to the senses against the allurement of beauty.
"We must never meet again," he said severely.
"You are right," she answered wistfully, and something like a smile lurked mischievously in the corners of her mouth. The moon plays havoc with men, but lends great discernment to the daughters of earth.
Another half-hour passed, full of words that meant so little and silences that meant so much. Then, with a quick contraction of his shoulders and a deepening frown, he turned and faced her squarely.
"I came to your home," he said, "to gather material for satire. I found it in your parents—in your brothers—in you. In my room are ten completed articles which I am going to send to New York. They are my impressions of the English. They will be published as the psychology of England studied under the microscope of a satirist."