"Don't you like the woods, Miss Hubert?" I called out experimentally.
She stopped at once and waited for me to catch up with her. There was the very faintest possible suggestion of timidity in the action.
"Don't you like the woods?" I repeated.
She shook her head. "No, not especially," she answered. "That is, not all woods. There's such a difference. Some woods feel as though they had violets in them, and some woods feel as though they had—Indians."
I couldn't help laughing. "How about these woods?" I quizzed.
She gave a little gasp. "I don't believe there are violets in any woods to-night," she faltered.
Even as she spoke we heard a swish and a crackle ahead of us and Sagner came running back. "Let's go round the other way," he insisted.
"I won't go round the other way," said Madge Hubert. "How perfectly absurd! What's the matter?"
Even as she argued we stepped out into the open clearing and met Harold Lennart and "Little Sister" singing their way home hand in hand through the witching night. For an instant our jovial greetings parried together, and then we passed. Not till we had reached Madge Hubert's doorstep did I lose utterly the wonderful lilting echo of that young contralto voice with the man's older tenor ringing in and out of it like a shimmery silver lining.
Ten minutes later in Sagner's cluttered workroom we two men sat and stared through our pipe-smoke into each other's evasive eyes.