"Are you a murderer?"

And with that and a whisk of her skirts, and a footfall on the gravel
path, she was gone. He stood dumbfounded, poor comedian, having come to
play the chief role, but to find the scene taken out of his hands. Then
catching the flutter of her wrap, as she disappeared into the darkness of
the veranda, be cried in a loud, manly voice:

"You are a dear!"

As he came out into the street through a gap in the hedge, he paused,
drawing his cloak about him, and lifted his face to the eastern moon. It
was a strange face: the modelling most like what is called "Greek," save
for the nose, which was a trifle too short for that, and the features
showed a happy purity of outline almost childlike; the blue eyes, clear,
fleckless, serenely irresponsible, with more the look of refusing
responsibility than being unconscious of it; eyes without care, without
prudence, and without evil. A stranger might have said be was about
twenty-five and had never a thought in his life. There were some blossoms
on the hedge, and he touched one lightly, as though he chucked it under
the chin; he smiled upon it then, but not as he had smiled upon Miss
Betty, for this was his own, the smile that came when he was alone; and,
when it came, the face was no longer joyous as it had been in repose;
there was an infinite patience and worn tolerance-possibly for himself.
This incongruous and melancholy smile was astonishing: one looked for the
laughter of a boy and found, instead, a gentle, worldly, old prelate.

Standing there, all alone in the moonlight, by the hedge, he lifted both
hands high and waved them toward the house, as children wave to each other
across lawns at twilight. After that he made a fantastic bow to his