"Impossible," her husband said, "you would have the sun routing you in an hour or two."
"Then we must keep the door open. I don't suppose there are burglars about."
"Burglars? I'd like to catch them—but damp—one can't fight that."
"It is too hot to be damp," she asserted, laying a hand on the frilled pillows of her tiny bunk.
"But dangerous mists rise up from the river," he argued, warningly.
"I am not afraid of mists," she said, and in her long silk bedgown she tripped to the outer door, opened it, and returned to fling herself in abandonment of fatigue upon her tiny couch.
As accompaniment to her slumbers the lapping of the tide against the house-boat steps made a soft, incessant music, while the swishing of reeds by the river bank sighed a sweet response to the whispered endearments of the wind. On the air still floated drowsily the sound of strings from guitars, and the muffled echo of voices that sang in other house-boats farther down the stream. Then by degrees, within the space of an half-hour, came a greater hush—the hush of a sleeping world worn out with laughter and laziness.
And Maud Rolleston, dreaming, grew paler under the moonbeams that peered through the lace shroudings of the narrow window. She sighed sometimes in her sleep, now and again lifting her head upon an elbow, as though to look out on the expanse of water that purled almost silently to its inevitable future. Her eyes were open, expressionless, but tearful. In the crystal seemed a reflection of the water's suddenly ruffled surface which the moon was dappling with points of silver....
By and by she put her feet to the ground, hesitatingly at first, and then gliding through the open door, she stood on an old Moorish prayer-carpet that covered the head of the steps. Two nautilus shells holding their burden of giant mignonette shielded her from the air; but it broke at times fragrantly from the scented forest of blossoms.