It was a very pleasant little dinner-party. Everybody had been cheerful and talkative, and pleased with everybody else. The new curate was as neutral as a curate should be and as Annabel Moulde would let him. Old Mr. Valentine, quoting Shakespeare and criticizing the cooking, was mellow with his hostess, and merciful to his grandchildren, and even allowed Aunt Adela, who always expanded in the presence of ‘the gentlemen,’ to gush and flutter unreproved at his deafer ear.

Wilfred and James, reliable as electric switches, had been instantly illuminated by the advent of the two pretty cousins and by the end of the meal, were already in the stammering stage of a great devotion, though still uncertain at which shrine to pay their vows. James, singing Maid of Athens with equal feeling and flatness, for the ensnarement of Lucy, could yet cock the eye of a connoisseur upon the proprietress of Wilfred: and Wilfred, after seconding his brother with one finger in the treble and a magnificent if uncertain bass accompaniment, was yet not averse, as he cushioned himself on the congratulations of Rhoda, from twirling his mustachelets, so much more promising than those of James, in full view of his twin’s enchantress. Indeed, Laura’s experience, had she been attending to them, would have prophesied a-set-to partners before the evening was over, but a probable as-you-were by the end of the following day. She would have foreseen a matinÉe—two or three matinÉes—and probably a day on the river. She could have told you, for all her unworldly air, that Rhoda (Laura did not approve of Rhoda) would wear entirely unsuitable clothes, yet look so garishly attractive in them that James would be once more unsettled in his mind: and that Wilfred, the good comrade, and always the more puritan in his tastes, would be relievedly ready to console Lucy: and that Lucy of the dove-grey frocks, and neat shoes and gloves, would be demurely ready to be consoled: and that in the small hours of Sunday she, Laura, would be roused from sound sleep to entertain pyjamas and receive confidences, bestowed, as a dog bestows the stone he wishes you to throw for him, with circlings and shyings, and coy withdrawals, with a depositing of it at your feet, and a thinking better of it, and a hasty retreat, and an elaborate pretence of wishing to be unmolested, and of not knowing anything of any stone at all.

Laura could have anticipated her brothers’ every gambit to you, if she had not been occupied in discovering how different from the Justin of relaxed waistcoat and pre-historic tweeds was the Justin of evening dress and hospitable exertions, if she had not been so delightfully employed in saying how-do-you-do to his creaseless shirt-front and discreet studs and the unusually high collar that suited him better than she could have believed, and in renewing acquaintance with his deep voice and his slow sentences and his kind eyes.

Dinner-parties were rare enough for Mrs. Cloud to be similarly engaged. Somewhere near his tie (it was a badly managed affair—the hands of both women were itching to be at it) their glances met and exchanged conviction that you might scour many more dinner-tables than England held before you found another Justin.

“He has his little faults, of course,” conceded Laura’s eyes.

“And I am the first to admit them,” returned Mrs. Cloud’s.

“Nobody ever pretended that he was perfect,” Laura frowned.

“At the same time——” laughed the old eyes.

“And without partiality——” amended the young one’s—

“Have you ever seen any one like him?” they demanded triumphantly: and Laura and Mrs. Cloud smiled at each other across the table.

Dinner was over. Sugar and cream followed the mound of strawberries from plate to plate, and Gran’papa was saying “Doubtless——” in the unnatural voice of one about to make a quotation, when Mrs. Cloud lifted her finger.

“Timothy!” she said resignedly and pushed back her chair.

“What about him?” Justin was at the side-board, busy with cork-screw and a bottle.

“Listen!”

There was a thin piping in the air, the merest adumbration of a sound that might have been a mouse, a creak in the woodwork, a whistle of wind, or, if one were a grandmother, a child whimpering.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Mr. Valentine testily. He disliked a reminder of his deafness.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Cloud. “It’s the same every night. He likes some one to sit with him——”

“Now, Mother——” Justin’s hand on her shoulder would not let her rise. “You stay where you are! Timothy’s all right. He gets over you. He’s got to learn to go to sleep by himself.”

Laura agreed.

“I don’t think a child is ever too young to be trained. If you once give way——”

“Exactly!” Justin nodded approval. “It’s a question of discipline. Now, Mother——” for Mrs. Cloud was gazing unhappily at the younger generation. “He’ll soon learn to be quiet if you take no notice.” He was a little impatient. It was a difficult to enjoy his strawberries while his mother worried.

“Yes, really, Mrs. Cloud,” Laura reassured her kindly. “It’s the only way.”

“My dear children, he’ll cry the house down.” Mrs. Cloud could not be annoyed with Justin, or with Laura who appreciated Justin, but her voice was plaintive. “You don’t understand. It’s so bad for a child——”

“That’s temper!” said Laura decisively. “Pure temper. He wants a lesson. If he were mine——” The sound of crying grew and died again as a maid opened and shut the door.

“Smack him,” said Laura firmly. “A good sound smacking! There’s nothing like it.”

“She’s quite right, Mother, you know,” corroborated Justin. But, agreeing with her as he did, he yet caught himself contrasting her pretty, resolute frown with his mother’s soft distress, and thinking that if he were Timothy he knew which he should prefer. Laura was a sensible girl, of course ... but rather hard, in this matter of a small kid? Yes, hard.... He didn’t like a woman to be hard.... His mother now.... Yet it was surprising that his mother had not put up more of a fight for Timothy.... Meekly letting herself be overborne by Laura.... Yet behind that meekness—he glanced suspiciously across the table—yes, behind it his mother was enjoying herself ... laughing at somebody or something.... He knew that quiet, delicious twinkle.... Now at whom or what, he wondered, was she laughing? His uncertainty spoiled the flavour of his strawberries.

Laura also found her dessert less toothsome than usual. Through the snatches of conversation she caught herself alert for the faint sound that had disturbed Mrs. Cloud. But Mrs. Cloud had apparently forgotten again.

Of course Timothy was a naughty child ... but she did think Mrs. Cloud might after all have gone up to him ... just for a minute.... She had expected her to go in spite of protests. He was not crying now.... All quiet.... She supposed he was all right.... She played with her strawberries. She had taken far more than she wanted.... The afternoon had given her a headache—the indecisive, disappointing afternoon.... It was a pity to waste five fine strawberries.... Timothy would have enjoyed them, bless his greedy little heart.... He was as quiet as a lamb now....

“I suppose he is all right?” she said aloud to no-one in particular. She was unanswered: the table was all a-chatter. She pushed back her chair, shook out her skirts and picked up, unobtrusively, her plate of strawberries.

“Mrs. Cloud! I think I’ll just run up and see if he’s all right. D’you mind?”

A nod approved her and she slipped out of the room. The bright old eyes followed her, well-pleased.

Justin did not miss her till he had put himself to the trouble of setting up the bridge table, a collapsible affair that he had never noticed was easier to manage with Laura at his elbow to keep down the legs that were down and to hold up the legs that were up. Deserted, he found that all four legs were inclined to kick at him and make him feel undignified. He could not help feeling annoyed with Laura, and said so to his mother.

“Where on earth has Laura got to? Aren’t we going to have any bridge?”

The twins and the pretty cousins had rioted into the billiard-room, and he regarded the emptied parlour blankly enough. He looked forward to his game of bridge, with old Mr. Valentine and his mother safely partnered, and Laura opposite himself—Laura of the intelligent questions when the round was over, accepting reproofs in a proper spirit—Laura, returner of leads and reserver of thirteenth cards—Laura, drilled out of all audacities, but so beautifully reliable, the perfect partner whom he could pride himself on having personally distilled from such raw ingredients as a dislike of being beaten and an early passion for Happy Families. It occasionally occurred to him to be surprised at the acquiescence of Mr. Valentine in an inferior partner, never dreaming that Laura playing bridge with Justin was a very different person from Laura playing bridge with Gran’papa or anybody else. How should Justin guess that she played her cards as a performing dog reads the alphabet, guided, for all her rapt air and business-like frown, by the innumerable hints her all-observant knowledge of him gave her. How should Justin realize that his left hand a-fiddle with his ear meant perplexity, or that the little push back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling and an imaginary fly was a sure sign to her that the game was in her hands? How should he know that his eyebrows lifted ever so faintly when he thought her reckless, and that for him to get up and knock out his pipe against the fire-place warned her against going spades when there were four aces in his hand? But Laura’s sixth or Justin-sense knew it and blessed the little tricks that helped her to give him a pleasant evening. It never occurred to her that she was cheating, and that Justin would have been horrified had he known.

But she paid the price of her ill ways. She had not studied Gran’papa as she had studied Justin, and, dutifully playing double-dummy in the long winter evenings, she contrived without effort to make him feel unnecessarily sorry for Justin.

Gran’papa, with his host and hostess and Aunt Adela in attendance, could dispense with his granddaughter, was mildly annoyed that Justin, fidgety fellow, must go in search of her and that Mrs. Cloud should suggest it. Mrs. Cloud had been pleasantly unable to imagine what was keeping Laura. She had gone up to Timothy, but that was half an hour ago. Justin might run up and see. Mrs. Cloud would set out the cards.

Justin found the nursery door ajar and, as he pushed it open, the thin spear of light upon the floor widened and sharpened so that he could not see beyond it. He spoke into the darkness—

“Laura?”

“Yes.”

“I say—isn’t he asleep yet?”

“Of course. Fast. Don’t talk so loudly.” Her undertones were tense with triumph.

“Why don’t you come down then? We’ve been waiting——”

“Oh, I’m sorry. But he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t let go.” There was the daintiest little chuckle of pride in her voice and Justin felt his sense of injury melting. His eyes, accustomed to the half darkness, had found her at last, a splash of black draperies on the whiteness of the coverlet. Timothy, nominally a-bed, had forsaken his pillow for her shoulder and there lay snug, all pink curves and inadequate nightgown—one small fist tugging at her hair. A woolly beast was on her lap, and a tipped plate that had held strawberries, for the green calyxes were sliding off its rim. Her watch was on the floor, and he thought, by the ticking of it, that the lid was open. Her bracelets were on Timothy’s arm. He chuckled.

“You’ve been having a high old time!”

“I?” she countered blankly. “Don’t creak so, Justin. What are you looking for?”

“The slipper. Didn’t you smack him?”

“You don’t understand children,” said Laura coldly. “He was perfectly good. He only wanted managing.”

He surveyed the evidences of management with a twinkle, but he spoke sympathetically—

“I say, old girl, you’ll get a stiff neck. Keep still. No, I won’t wake him.”

With immense caution his big hands closed over the clutching, tiny fingers, straightened them, and unwound the tangle of bright hair. Then, slipping his arm under Timothy, he lifted him, warm and relaxed as a kitten, back into the identical hollow in which he had lain before. For an egg warm from the nest he could not have been more careful.

Timothy never stirred.

Laura, smoothing back her hair, watched him in silence, thinking thoughts of her own. Then, as he turned, she held out her hands, smiling.

“Help me up—I didn’t know I was so stiff. He won’t wake now, will he? He was dead tired, poor little chap! I’m so sorry I forgot about the bridge—but you see—it’s so bad to let them cry.”

“Of course,” he agreed indignantly. He too had had Timothy in his arms. “What was the matter?”

“Just frightened. That pig of a nurse had never put him a night-light. I shall tell Mrs. Cloud. It’s a sin not to give a child a night-light, with bears under every chair.”

“Bears! A bear would have been a comforting beast! I read Dracula when I was seven.”

“It was hands with me,” Laura was fumbling in the wash-stand drawer. “There was a curio, a mummy’s hand, locked up in the top drawer of the wardrobe, at least somebody said so. It used to squeeze itself out and come crawling down, dropping from one drawer knob to the next, like a spider. My bed was next to the wardrobe. I used to roll myself up in the bedclothes till I nearly choked, but even then I could feel it through the blankets pawing at my face.”

“Oh, beastly!”

“If they’d only have let me have my kitten—but Auntie always took it away last thing. Here are the night-lights.”

“But if you’d told——”

“One doesn’t, you know. This scrap was bitterly afraid. I knew! But do you think it would tell me? Not it. We discussed Rumpelstiltskin; but there was a bear behind our chair all the while and our reflections in the looking-glass, and always the dark. Got some matches?”

She lit the night-light and set it afloat in its saucer. The tiny flame turned the black room grey—a ghostly, friendless grey. Justin glanced thoughtfully from Timothy to the swaying shadows and back again to Timothy, a small enough sojourner in the desert of double bed. He coughed.

“I say, Laura——”

“Yes?”

“I say, Laura—let’s give him two night-lights and damn the expense!”

“All right!”

Her voice was casual, yet there was something flame-like about her as she followed him across the room, sheltering the lighted match with closed hands, translucently scarlet, a living lamp that lit up her delicate face and laughing, passionate eyes and the duller red of her hair. And with the same flame-like restlessness she hovered about him, enjoying, a little feverishly, her brief authority.

“No, Justin—not there. Put it in the dark corner, by the hanging cupboard. Yes—oh, quite safe. And, Justin—if you fastened the curtain back—right back—here, take my scarf—he would see at once there was nothing behind it. That’s splendid. I don’t think he’ll wake though, do you? Let’s come away quietly.”

They tiptoed out of the room.

But before the lights of the landing Laura shrank oddly, like a bright sword slipping back into its sheath. Justin glanced at her more than once as they went down, and, the stairway being narrow, he made more room for them both by slipping his arm through hers. He was discovering that he did not like Laura to look tired.

Now their curiously impersonal alliance had never needed more than a handshake at rare intervals to confirm it. Such an unfamiliar gesture, unconscious as he was that it had been a caress, meant, she knew, so much from him, implied so much of intimacy and approval, that she flushed at his touch in a pang of secret delight. Yet the fear that was always upon her when she loved him most, not of him, but of untimely divergence from his standards, of unwittingly jarring his fastidious and uncertain taste, held her, now as always, passive, denying him nothing yet not daring to respond, lest an intonation, a glance, or even the little welcoming pressure on his arm, should qualify the security of their relationship.

Yet, in spite of her quiescence and his unconsciousness, they contrived to drift past the drawing-room door, and the billiard-room door, and all the allurements of the bridge table, to agree silently to a pacing up and down of the dim terrace, with its black shadows and window-pools of light, and its hedge of larkspur and lilies, and Canterbury bells that jingled hoarsely, as Laura’s skirts passing and repassing set them a-sway.

They had left time behind them in the house. The dark, quiet minutes lived and died unnoticed to the soft crunch of their feet on the dewy gravel. Justin stared abstractedly before him, and Laura, her step matching his, was filled with a sudden blessed sense of possession and forgot utterly all the doubt and oppression of the previous weeks. She felt herself, even as the plant-life about her, reviving, straightening, drawing strength from the night, and its peace was poured upon her like a precious ointment. She could even accept Justin’s silence without anxiety, without the quick rummage of her brain to reassure herself that she had amusement stored there for him should he show signs of boredom—ideas, questions, hobby-horses for his restlessness to straddle. For he was restless: through her peace she felt it stirring in him, and longed as she always did, to content it. She slackened.

“Justin—go slower. We’re disturbing the night.” She stood still and, half impatiently, he acquiesced.

“Isn’t it big? And not a star——”

He drew a deep breath.

“What’s that stuff—coming across in gusts—warm gusts?”

“Sweet briar. There’s a hedge——”

He sought awkwardly for words.

“It’s—it’s like a woman breathing.”

She smiled up at him.

“Why not? June’s here.”

He was intent.

“Where?”

“Here——” Her free arm flung out vaguely. “Can’t you feel her—see her?”

“Can you?”

“Yes, I can,” she said, low-voiced.

“Wish I could.” He paused, expectant, listening, till all the tiny myriad noises that make up silence disintegrated once more. He could hear the tinkle of the brook three fields away, and the croak of its frogs, and the dry whisper of crickets in the flowery grass. Somewhere in the valley a train roared and was gone again, brief in its passage as a shooting star, and at his ear a mosquito hummed by like an echo. The metallic strains of the village gramophone, twanging out rag-time, reached him, all silvered over by the distance, and he felt himself thrill absurdly to the thin, sweet sounds. Before him lay the grey, silent garden and the black velvet of the motionless woods, but a poplar on the lawn was faintly murmurous, like a child sighing in its sleep. Overhead the bats wheeled and glimmered with threadlike cheepings.

He was suddenly aware of his own enormous restlessness. A muscle in his throat was throbbing hotly: he felt thirsty and unhappy, and resentful of the quiet night and the quiet woman at his side who did not help him to he knew not what. He turned impatiently.

“No. There’s only us! June indeed! Come on in. It’s getting late. How cold your fingers are——”

From a near copse an owl hooted derisively.