I was alone with Zura. The night being mild for the time of year, she proposed that we stroll in the garden. To her this lovely spot was something new and beautiful. To me it was something old and tender, but the charm, the spell it wove around us both was the same. It lay in perfect peace, kissed to silence and tender mystery by the splendor of the great, red, autumn moon. More beautiful now, the legend said, because the gods gathered all the brilliant coloring from the dying foliage and gave it to the pale moon lady for safe keeping.
"And look," exclaimed Zura, as we walked beside the waters which gave back the unclouded glory, "if the shining dame isn't using our lake for a looking-glass. You know, Ursula, this is the only night in the year the moon wears a hat. It's made from the scent of the flowers. Doesn't that halo around her look like a chapeau?"
We strolled along, and to Zura's pleadings I answered with ghost legends and myths from a full store gathered through long, lonely years. Charmed by the magic of the night and the wonder of the garden, we lingered long.
We paused in the ghostly half-light of the tall bamboo where the moonlight trickled through, to listen to the song of the Mysterious Bird of the Spirit Land. The bird is seldom seen alive, but if separated from its mate, at once it begins the search by a soft appealing call. If absence is prolonged the call increases to heart-breaking moaning, till from exhaustion the bird droops head downward and dies from grief.
That night the mate was surely lost. The lonely feathered thing made us shiver with the weirdness of its sad notes.
Suddenly we remembered the lateness of the hour and our guest. We took a short cut across the soft grass toward the house.
We turned sharply around a clump of bamboo and halted. A few steps before us was Page Hanaford. Seated on the edge of an old stone lantern, head in hands, out of the bitterness of some agony we heard him cry, "God in Heaven! How can I tell her!"
Zura and I clutched hands and crept away to the house. Even then we did not dare to look each other in the face.
Soon after Page came in. He gave no sign of his recent storm, but said good-night to me and, looking down at Zura, he held out his hand without speaking.
Now that I could see the girl's face I could hardly believe she was the same being. With flushed cheeks and downcast eyes she stood in wondering silence, as if in stumbling upon a secret place in a man's soul, she had fallen upon undiscovered regions in her own.