THE NIGHT BREEZE
Frank sat on the north wall watching the moon through the leaves. Her light was faint, for the skirts of the day still swept the west. He had watched her for half an hour—the pale crescent, which even in that short time had seemed to wane, as her light waxed and her horns grew keener on the night's front—the high forlorn hope of heaven's host that could not all that month drive out the day. He sat under the close silence of the elm, among whose leaves there crept the faint, veiled murmur of the seaboard, fingered by the brooding surges as they beat out their slow, uncertain, soft-swelling music. Now and again there came, twining among the mellow notes of the water, from some far field the corncrake's brazen call, and made the gold ring stronger. These sounds, the pale moonlight, the night, and the idea of Muriel, possessed him to the exclusion of thought. Passion rendered him impassive, and he waited without impatience. Slowly pealing from the tower in Gourock, ten strokes told the hour. A crackling twig, a footstep, a rustle, and Muriel was beside him.
Nothing was said till she had recovered her breath; then her voice, timed unconsciously to the rippling accompaniment of the waves, whispered clear, 'When you had gone, my father locked me in my room. The thought of waiting-and-waiting here all night would soon have made me mad, so I got out by the window. I threw out a cushion, and then I was frightened. But after a little my courage came back again, and then I threw over two more, and dropped down quite soft. I don't know whether any one saw or heard me; but you wanted me, and I'm here. See, I tore my dress.'
He kissed her dress.
'You must not enter your father's house again,' he said.
Her breath came quick; she took his arm, and looked at him intently.
'Do you know your father?' he asked.
'He is difficult; but I am beginning to.'
'Then you will understand why his house is not for you.'
She had only a look with which to answer, and he did not think it satisfactory.