At about ten o'clock the Rev. Needham took out his watch and thought it was time he and his little party set their faces homeward. Mrs. Needham had been talking gentle gossip with Mrs. Blake and the wife of the minister from Dubuque; but she got up at once and obediently took her husband's arm.

"We go to bed early at Beachcrest," she explained. They went to bed early in town, for that matter, though the full truth went uncommunicated.

"Where are the girls?" demanded the Rev. Needham, looking anxiously round.

Louise came up hurriedly, followed by Barry. "Are you starting home now, papa?" she asked, with what sounded strangely like eagerness.

"Well, we thought we'd just be starting along. It's—it's not late yet, you know. We'll just slip on ahead and get the cottage lighted."

"I think we'll go along now too."

"Oh, I wouldn't hurry. The fire's quite good yet."

"Lynndal is tired," she insisted. "He didn't sleep more than a couple of hours on the boat." And she gave him a very complex glance in which there was something whisperingly like an element of tenderness.

[Pg 263]

"Well," capitulated Mrs. Needham.

But Louise was only one daughter. Where was Hilda?

Where indeed? Where was she?

Anxious eyes explored the assembled company. Most of the young people had mysteriously made off, some this way and some that, but all alike into the friendly embrace of the darkness which lay so thick beyond the glow of the fire. Where was Hilda?

"I think I saw her with the lad—is it Leslie?" said Lynndal Barry.

"Oh—Leslie," repeated Mrs. Needham.

"You didn't notice which way they went?" asked the minister.

"No, I'm afraid I didn't."

Then Louise came to the rescue. She pointed miserably, yet also with a faint, new fact-facing grimness, toward the lake.

"They haven't taken out the canoe ...!" Alfred Needham was horror struck.

"It's perfectly calm, papa," Louise reminded him dryly.

Then, indeed, they saw the canoe, on the moonlit water. Both Leslie and Hilda were paddling. But they were not exactly paddling toward the shore.

"She knows it's not allowed, out like this at all hours of the night!" cried the minister.

But his wife reassured him in her gentle way. "Alf, I wouldn't worry. Leslie will look out for her."

[Pg 264]

Louise lowered her head. Then she moved almost imperceptibly closer to Lynndal. At length the homeward march was begun. But the Rev. Needham stopped again suddenly, looking at his wife in a helpless way.

"Anna, where's your sister?"

"Dear me!" cried Anna Needham. "We were starting right off without her!"

"Is that Miss Whitcom?" asked Barry.

"Who?"

"Where?"

"The lady just ahead, coming this way."

It was true. There was a lady approaching along the beach. But she was with a man, and the man....

"Alf!" whispered Anna, gripping her husband's arm.

"Well?"

"Oh—look!"

"What is it, Anna?"

She murmured in almost an ecstasy: "Why, he's got his arm right round her waist!"

The awful intelligence that this was indeed Marjory, and that a man had his arm around her waist, smote the minister's consciousness with peculiar and climactic force.

Hilda and Leslie took their own good time about coming in off the lake. It was so wonderful out there in the moonlight.

"I've had a perfectly grand time!" she told him,[Pg 265] her voice thrilling richly with conviction. She knew she had had a grand time, and whatever might be the sequel when she faced her parents, the grandness would never, never diminish.

They ascended the slight sand elevation and reached the steps leading up to the porch. Moonlight patched and patterned the steps. They did not go any farther.

Hilda sat down, drawing her knees and chin together, while Leslie whistled softly.

"Will your father be mad?" he asked.

"Oh, no!" the girl exclaimed, with the full and emphatic authority of one who is gravely in doubt. "Why?" she added. "It isn't late, is it?"

Leslie pulled out his watch. "N-o-o. Only twenty after eleven."

"Twenty after eleven? Twenty after eleven! Oh, my goodness! I didn't have any idea it was so late. It seemed as though we were only out there a couple of minutes!"

"It did to me, too," admitted Leslie.

The lateness of the hour, however, appeared to exert no immediate influence upon either his recognition of the wisdom of departure or hers of withdrawal to bed. Leslie swung back and forth, clinging to a slender birch tree which grew quite close to the cottage. Its silver leaves crashed gently together, as though a breeze were thrusting its way through.

"I could simply sit out here all night!" Hilda declared.

[Pg 266]

Leslie admitted he could too. Presently he did sit down. He sat down beside Hilda, but, as before, one step below her. It was certainly a lovely night. His head somehow found her knee; then Eros could hardly contain himself! Hilda ran her fingers very lightly through his hair. They did not bother to talk much.

At length he asked: "Shall we go out after raspberries tomorrow? Would you like to?"

"Oh, Les—that would be lots of fun!"

"All right."

"Shall we take a lunch so we won't have to hurry?"

"Good idea."

"What time will you come, Les?"

"What time do you want me?"

"Oh—I don't know."

"Right after breakfast?"

"Oh, yes!" Her answer to this question held no slightest inflection of doubt.

"What time do you have breakfast?"

"Never later than eight o'clock, and it only takes me a minute to eat!"

Leslie appeared to have forgotten all about going back to the city, after all....

There was another warm silence. The boy had no idea of starting for his own cottage, nor had Hilda any idea of going to bed. It didn't, for some strange reason, occur to either that the parent Needhams might be waiting up in there, and that the minister, harassed over dim prospects of ruin perceived in the[Pg 267] relationship of his daughter and the man who handled the Western interests, was attaining an attitude of really appalling austerity. No, they didn't bother their spoony young heads about any of these things, until all at once the cottage door opened, letting out upon them a flood of light from the living room.

"Hello, papa!" cried Hilda, guiltily and very affectionately. She jumped up.

The Rev. Needham did not say much out on the porch; but when Leslie had crept off, after hurriedly squeezing the girl's hand, and Hilda had been marshalled within, the law was laid down with unusual vigour. Mrs. Needham took it all rather more quietly, primarily because she did not share, in its full poignancy, her husband's alarm over Louise. Of course she was concerned. But the poise of climax was beginning to assert itself. No doubt tomorrow, if a reign of chaos really did set in, Mrs. Needham would rule over the turmoil like a very judge. She would become dominant, as when she went to rescue her daughter from the Potomac. It was perhaps her only complex.

Hilda had just been sent up to bed, rather subdued, but in her heart immensely radiant, when Marjory arrived home. O'Donnell wanted to hang around awhile, but she wouldn't let him. No, she positively refused to linger any longer in the moonlight. She reproved herself a little. She reproved him a little, too. They had already been quite romantic enough[Pg 268] for one night. And she hustled him off with a lack of ceremony which went with her years and her temperament. All the same, he managed to steal a glancing kiss. And Eros—who I forgot to say had remained in hiding out there—Eros told himself that this was infinitely better for his purposes than a mere handshake!

When he had gone, she sat down on the steps alone, for a moment. It was so wonderful—life was—and the night. She watched the moon declining over a just-troubled sea. Then abruptly she became conscious of voices in the cottage living room.

"Now, your sister!"

"Well, Alf?"

"She's still out!"

"Oh, Marjory knows the way."

"But at such an hour!"

"It............