Dick disappeared into the kitchen with Mrs. Meredith to show her how they make a salad at the Wigwam, and Nell and her father went a-fishing from a bedroom window. The night was so silent now that Rob and Mary seemed to have it to themselves. A canoe in a blaze of coloured light drifted past without a sound. The grass on the bank parted, and water-rats peeped out. All at once Mary had nothing to say, and Rob shook on his stool. The moon was out looking at them.  
'Oh,' Mary cried, as something dipped suddenly in the water near them.
 
'It was only a dabchick,' Rob guessed, looking over the rail.
 
'What is a dabchick?' asked Mary.
 
Rob did not tell her. She had not the least desire to know.
 
In the river, on the opposite side from where the lay, a stream drowns itself. They had not known of its existence before, but it was roaring like a to them now. Mary slightly, turning her face to the island, and Rob took a great breath as he looked at her. His hand held her brown sunshade that was ribbed with , the sunshade with the handle that Mary held upside down. Other ladies carried their sunshades so, and Rob resented it. Her back was toward him, and he sat still, gazing at the loose blue jacket that only reached her waist. It was such a slender waist that Rob trembled for it.
 
The trees that hung over the house-boat were black, but the moon made a fairyland of the sward beyond. Mary could only see the island between heavy branches, but she looked straight before her until tears dimmed her eyes. Who would dare to seek the thoughts of a girl at such a moment? Rob moved nearer her. Her blue cap was back, her chin rested on the rail. All that was good in him was astir when she turned and read his face.
 
'I think I shall go down now,' Mary said, becoming less pale as she . Rob's eyes followed her as she moved toward the ladder.
 
'Not yet,' he called after her, and could say no more. It was always so when they were alone; and he made himself suffer for it afterwards.
 
Mary stood at the top of the ladder. She would not turn back, but she did not . Mr. Meredith was fishing lazily from the lower deck, and there was a of voices in the saloon. On the road running parallel to the river traps and men were shadows creeping along to Hampton. Lights were going out there. Mary looked up the stretch of water and sighed.
 
'Was there ever so beautiful a night?' she said.
 
'Yes,' said Rob, at her elbow, 'once at Castle, the night I saw you first.'
 
'I don't remember,' said Mary hastily, but without going down the ladder.
 
'I might never have met you,' Rob continued grimly, 'if some man in Silchester had not murdered his wife.'
 
Mary started and looked up at him. Until she ceased to look he could not go on.
 
'The murder,' he explained, 'was of more importance than Colonel Abinger's dinner, and so I was sent to the castle. It is rather curious to trace these things back a step. The woman her husband into striking her, because she had not prepared his supper. Instead of doing that she had been gossiping with a neighbour, who would not have had time for gossip had she not been laid up with a ankle. It came out in the evidence that this woman had hurt herself by slipping on a marble, so that I might never have seen you had not two boys, whom neither of us ever heard of, challenged each other to a game at marbles.'
 
'It was stranger that we should meet again in London,' Mary said.
 
'No,' Rob answered, 'the way we met was strange, but I was expecting you.'
 
Mary pondered how she should take this, and then pretended not to hear it.
 
'Was it not rather The Scorn of Scorns that made us know each other?' she asked.
 
'I knew you after I read it a second time,' he said; 'I have got that copy of it still.'
 
'You said you had the card.'
 
'I have never been able to understand,' Rob answered, 'how I lost that card. But,' he added sharply, 'how do you know that I lost it?'
 
Mary glanced up again.
 
'I hate being asked questions, Mr. Angus,' she said sweetly.
 
'Do you remember,' Rob went on, 'saying in that book that men were not to be trusted until they reached their second childhood?'
 
'I don't know,' Mary replied, laughing, 'that they are to be trusted even then.'
 
'I should think,' said Rob, rather anxiously, 'that a woman might as well marry a man in his first childhood as in his second. Surely the golden mean——' Rob paused. He was just twenty-seven.
 
'We should strike the golden mean, you think?' asked Mary . 'But you see it is of such short duration.'
 
After that there was such a long pause that Mary could easily have gone down the ladder had she wanted to do so.
 
'I am glad that you and Dick are such friends,' she said at last.
 
'Why?' asked Rob quickly.
 
'Oh, well,' said Mary.
 
'He has been the best friend I have ever made,' Rob continued warmly, 'though he sa............