leave Carlow, you shall; since you do not wish to return, you need not.--
Are you laughing at me?" She leaned toward him, and looked at him
steadily, with her face close to his. He was not laughing; his eyes shone
with a deep fire; in that nearness he hardly comprehended what she said.
"Thank you for not laughing," she whispered, and leaned back from him. "I
suppose you think my promises are quite wild, and they are. I do not know
what I was talking about, or what I meant, any better than you do. You may
understand some day. It is all--I mean that it hurts one to hear you say
you do not care for Carlow." She turned away. "Come."

"Where?"

"It is my turn to conclude the interview. You remember, the last time it
was you who--" She broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her
hands. "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