Silence again, until Philip spoke. "Very well, I shall hunt you out in your corner with your faithful gnome, and I shall beg: (he sang) 'Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine.'"
Philip sang the song entirely through, slowly and deliberately, and Diana closed her eyes, and the laces on her sleeve trembled. The glory of the night, the glory of the voice were all one. She shrank into her corner and held desperately to her ideal.
When he had finished, Philip looked at her. Her head rested back upon the rock, her eyes were closed. The mysterious light lent her face a strange radiance.
"Diana," he said, and there was a thrill in his voice, "you are well named. Goddess of the moon you certainly are, and this night is an epoch in my life. I love, and in spite of your skepticism I shall be true." She opened her eyes and looked at him, and he drew a long, quick breath. "I can't let you stay here any longer. Your wrap isn't enough. Now we will sprint up to the Inn. Do you feel like it?"
"Oh, is it over?" she said softly.
"Yes, or else it has just begun. I am not sure which," he answered, and rising he gave her his hand and helped her to her feet. "The moon is no farther away from me than you," he said in the moment while he held her hand. "I am not going to forget it."
"Then it is I!" she thought, with a bound of the heart that turned her faint.
They scarcely spoke on the long, heavenly walk up the island. The sea was starry as the sky with the lights of fishing boats, and phosphorescence gleamed where the water was in shadow.
When he took her hand for good-night on the piazza of the Inn, she said: "I haven't thanked you for this wonderful evening. You know I do—Philomel."
He smiled down at her. "That reminds me of our first meeting here. 'Philomel with melody,' you said. I remember what I had been singing, too. It is still true." He kissed her hand, jumped over the piazza rail, narrowly missing the sweet peas, and strode away. The girl stood in the shadow watching the tall, white figure and listening to the waves of song that floated back through the moonlight.