The guides made a huge fire down by the shore, and left them
alone. They sat by it until nearly ten o'clock, he talking
incessantly; her overtures had roused in him the desire to please,
and, instead of the usual monologue of egotism and rant, he poured
out poetry, eloquence, sense and humorous shrewdness. Had he been
far less the unusual, the great man, she would still have listened
with a sense of delight, for in her mood that night his
penetrating voice, which, in other moods, she found as
insupportable as a needle-pointed goad, harmonized with the great,
starry sky and the mysterious, eerie shadows of forest and
mountain and lake close round their huge, bright fire. As they
rose to go in, up came the moon. A broad, benevolent, encouraging
face, the face of a matchmaker. Craig put his arm round Margaret.
She trembled and thrilled.

"Do you know what that moon's saying?" asked he. In his voice was
that exquisite tone that enabled him to make even commonplaces
lift great audiences to their feet to cheer him wildly.

She lifted soft, shining eyes to his. "What?" she inquired under
her breath. She had forgotten her schemes, her resentments, her
make-believe of every kind. "What--Joshua?" she repeated.

"It's saying: 'Hurry up, you silly children, down there! Don't you
know that life is a minute and youth a second?'" And now both his
arms were round her and one of her hands lay upon his shoulder.

"Life a minute--youth a second," she murmured.