"No wonder they are; I know I'm shy of myself. If only for once we lived in Denbigh! Then we might at least see the Faculty coming down past the staircase window and the lights going out in Taylor and know when the meeting was over." The castors complained as she pushed back her chair, then the sash went up and the breath of the night that came in and rattled Esther's papers tasted like deep well water, wonderfully pure and cool and dark. Esther wrapped her gown about her, for since dinner she had been working in the library, and crossing the study with the very light step of a very strong person leaned out the window behind her friend.
There was no moon, and the enormous star-sown hemisphere whose horizon fell below their feet, was tonight a faint blur of pearl-grey. Almost as faint and illusory was the ground, and the other halls were denoted by pinkish spots and splashes. From many of these, and in especial from the great windows of the library, ran bands of moonlight-coloured light, like a search-light seen transversely, but filmier. A step rang along the board walk, crunched the gravel, dying away muffled and uneven on grass; voices blew up to them from somewhere and a far-off singing that sounded sweet. Sydney Lodge shivered a little and was drawn in to the fire.
"Lie down and scorch your fuzzy head, young Shelley. The ten o'clock bell hasn't rung and they won't agree for hours yet."
"They never take long over the graduate fellowships,—they put them off, as last year; still, I admit the senior one is hard to settle," acknowledged Sydney, mischievously.
Esther answered with joyful appreciation: "This is quite the most picturesque situation we were ever in. If you don't get it I shall be comforted by its being Hilda——"
"—and if Hilda misses it we've all three the satisfaction of knowing the honour is yours—all three, mark you; for it is an honour, you know. And one of us must get it," finished Sydney with conviction.
At the door a knock made both girls turn pale, but as it opened appeared a mermaid-head with knotted and dripping tresses, just from the swimming-pool, to beg Sydney's company and her violin below on the second floor. The invitation declined, the two were silent awhile.
II
Sydney, on the grey furry rug, trailed her slim length closer to the fire like a pale-green enchanted caterpillar.
"Did you hear Hilda on Marius at dinner?" she inquired drowsily. "She said if he hadn't stopped to bury his dead——"