brightening the South windows. All the same, it would have been much
jollier just taking hands by themselves somewhere, and saying out before
God what they really felt--because, after all, God was everything,
everywhere, not only in stuffy churches. That was how HE would like to
be married, out of doors on a starry night like this, when everything
felt wonderful all round you. Surely God wasn't half as small as people
seemed always making Him--a sort of superior man a little bigger than
themselves! Even the very most beautiful and wonderful and awful things
one could imagine or make, could only be just nothing to a God who had a
temple like the night out there. But then you couldn't be married alone,
and no girl would ever like to be married without rings and flowers and
dresses, and words that made it all feel small and cosy! Cis might
have, perhaps, only she wouldn't, because of not hurting other people's
feelings; but Sylvia--never--she would be afraid. Only, of course, she
was young! And the thread of his thoughts broke--and scattered like
beads from a string.

Leaning out, and resting his chin on his hands, he drew the night air
into his lungs. Honeysuckle, or was it the scent of lilies still? The
stars all out, and lots of owls to-night--four at least. What would
night be like without owls and stars? But that was it--you never could
think what things would be like if they weren't just what and where they
were. You never knew what was coming, either; and yet, when it came, it
seemed as if nothing else ever could have come. That was queer-you could
do anything you liked until you'd done it, but when you HAD done it,
then you knew, of course, that you must always have had to... What was
that light, below and to the left? Whose room? Old Tingle's--no, the
little spare room--Sylvia's! She must be awake, then! He leaned far out,
and whispered in the voice she had said was still furry: