"Ah, that!" she exclaimed. "I did not think--I did not mean to
speak of that miserable, miserable night. And _I_ to be harsh with you for
not caring to go back to Carlow!"
"Your harshness," he laughed. "A waft of eider."
"We must go," she said. He did not move, but sat staring at her like a
thirsty man drinking. With an impulsive and pretty gesture she reached
out her hand to him. Her little, white glove trembled in the night before
his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet generosity; his
thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that hand he had likened
to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in his own. And as they
had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the
moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them. A
plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of
starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they
heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins,
the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of
dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the
past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made
for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago.
"I care for only one thing in this world," he said, tremulously.
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