As she stood there, quite still, in the full moonlight, with a white cloak round her and a white scarf over her head, against the luminous darkness of the sky, she was more like some noble abbess come to life again than a young lady who intended to be married in five days.
And it was no chance resemblance, but a strange, momentary impression of a mental state upon the outward appearance—for Elizabeth would have become an abbess if, with her position and her character and her large private means, she had lived a few centuries earlier. She did so fundamentally belong to that type of woman who says to herself, “If I can’t be happy, I will be good,” which is quite illogical, of course, because that type of woman is always good to start with.
And as she paused, motionless, with her hand at her breast holding the close-drawn scarf, it was clear that the mahogany sideboard, in the guise of a harbinger of fate, had been at it again.
Andy ran forward out of the shadow and said breathlessly, in a voice which he scarcely knew to be his own—
“You were looking at my windows!”
Elizabeth gave a great start, and her face was very white in the moonlight.
“Yes,” she said, half whispering.
“What did you come for?” said Andy, pressing nearer to her.
They stood under a sycamore tree in the lane, but they could not see each other because a cloud sailed across the moon: it was very dark and still. Then the cloud passed—a little wind stirred—and immediately a thousand dusky stars of shadow quivered on the white radiance of the moonlit road.
“Why did you come?” repeated Andy a second time.