She looked forward with a curious dread to seeing him again. She wondered if the man who drove the car so recklessly had the faintest suspicion of the storm he had stirred up. But surely he knew Dick in all his moods! He had probably encountered it before. They sped on through the fragrant summer night, and she talked at random, hardly knowing what she said. If the squire noticed her preoccupation, he made no comment. He had conceived a great respect for Juliet.
They neared their destination at last, and Jack performed what the squire called his favorite circus-trick, racing the car to the top of the towering cliff and stopping dead at the edge of a great immensity of sea and stars.
Again Juliet drew a deep breath of sheer marvelling delight, speaking no word, held spell-bound by the wonder of the night.
"We needn't hurry," Fielding said. "They won't be starting yet."
So for a space they remained as though caught between earth and heaven, silently drinking in the splendour.
After a long pause she spoke. "Do you often come here?"
"Not now," he said. Then, as she glanced at him: "I used to in the days of my youth—the long past days."
And she knew by his tone, by the lingering of his words, that he had not always come alone.
She asked no more, and presently the jaunty notes of a banjo floating up the grassy slope told them that Green's entertainment had begun.
They left the car at the top of the rise, and walked down over the springy turf towards the old barn about which Dick's audience were collected. Two hurricane lamps and a rough deal table were all he had in the way of stage property. But she was yet to learn that this man relied upon surroundings and circumstances not at all. As she herself had said, possibly the torch of genius burned brightest in dark places, for it was certainly genius upon which she looked to-night.