"Oh Jane, Oh Jane, my pretty Jane, Oh Jane,
Ah never, never look so shy.
But meet me, meet me in the moonlight,
When the dew is on the rye."
Someone had lighted the piano candles, and she sat there strumming and singing in a little voice, and looking queer and lonely. His heart went hot in his breast, and then started pounding. He crossed silently, and stood just behind her. For some moments she would not notice him, but went on singing the same. And he stood perfectly still close behind her. Then at last she glanced upward at him, and his heart stood still again with the same sense of doom the sun had given him. She still went on singing for a few moments. Then she stopped abruptly, and jerked her hand from the piano.
"Don't you want to sing?" she asked sharply.
"Not particularly."
"What do you want then?"
"Let us go out."
She looked at him strangely, then rose in her abrupt fashion. She followed him across the yard in silence, while he felt the curious sense of doom settling down on him.
He sat down on the step of the back-door of the barn, outside, looking southward into the vast, rapidly darkening country, and glanced up at her. She, rather petulantly, sat down beside him. He felt for her cool slip of a hand, and she let it lie in his hot one. But she averted her face.
"Why don't you like me?" she asked petulantly.
"But I love you," he said thickly, with shame and the sense of doom piercing his heart.