business, and have crept down the ladder and gone away. But their
strange dress gave to the scene an air at once unreal and theatrical,
and not for an instant had I felt myself an intruder. It was as though
I were looking at the rehearsal of a drama designed for the public
gaze and enacted upon a stage; or, more properly, a pantomime, dim and
figurative, but most impressive. Might it not, indeed, be a rehearsal
of some sort--private theatricals--make-believe? But that scene at
midnight--that could not be make-believe! No, nor was this scene in
the garden. It was in earnest--in deadliest earnest; there was about
it something sinister and threatening; and it was the realisation of
this--the realisation that there was something here not right,
something demanding scrutiny--which kept me chained to my
uncomfortable perch, minute after minute.

But nothing further happened, and I realised, at last, that if I was
to escape an agonising cramp in the leg, I must get down. I put my
feet on the ladder, and then paused for a last look about the grounds.
My eye was caught by a flutter of white among the trees. Someone was
walking along one of the paths; in a moment, straining forward, I saw
it was the woman, and that she was approaching the wall.

And then, as she came nearer, I saw that she was not a woman at all,
but a girl--a girl of eighteen or twenty, to whom the flowing robes
gave, at a distance, the effect of age. I caught only a glimpse of
her face before it was hidden by a clump of shrubbery, but that
glimpse told me that it was a face to set the pulses leaping. I
strained still farther forward, waiting until she should come into
sight again....

Along the path she came, with the sunlight about her, kissing her