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She consented, therefore, and Jerry punted her across to her favourite nook for supper. She thoroughly enjoyed the repast, Jerry’s ideas of what a picnic-basket should contain being of a decidedly lavish order.

The meal over, he took up his banjo and waxed sentimental. Nan lay among her cushions and listened in sympathetic silence. Undeniably Jerry knew how to make music, and he also knew when to stop–a priceless gift in Nan’s estimation.

When the moon rose at last out of the summer haze, he had laid his instrument aside and was lying with his head on his arms and his face to the rising glory. They watched it dumbly in the silence of goodfellowship, till at last it topped the willows and shone in a broad, silver streak across the lake right up to the prow of the boat.

After a long time Jerry turned his dark head.

“I say, Nan!” he said, almost in a whisper.

“Yes?” she murmured back, her eyes still full of the splendour. The boy raised himself a little.

“Do you remember that day ever so long ago when we played at being sweethearts on this very identical spot?” he asked her softly.

She turned her eyes to his with a doubtful, questioning look.

“We weren’t in earnest, Jerry,” she reminded him.

He jerked one shoulder with a sharp, impatient gesture, highly characteristic of him.

“I know we weren’t. I shan’t dream of being in earnest in that way for another ten–perhaps twenty–years. But there’s no harm in making believe, is there, just now and then? I liked that game awfully, and so did you. You know you did.”

Nan did not attempt to deny it. She sat up instead with her hands clasped round her knees and laughed like an elf.

Her wedding-ring caught the moonlight, and the boy leaned forward with a frown.

“Take that thing off, won’t you, just for to-night? I hate to think you’re married. You’re not, you know. We’re in fairyland, and married people never go there. The fairies will turn you out if they see it.”

Very gently he inserted one finger between her clasped ones and began to draw the emblem off.

Nan made no resistance whatever. She only sat and laughed. She was in her gayest, most inconsequent mood. Some magic of the moonlight was in her veins that night.

“There!” said Jerry triumphantly. “Now you are safe. Jove! Did you hear that water-sprite gurgling under the boat? It must be ripping to be a water-sprite. Can’t you see them, Nan, whisking about down there in couples along the stones? Give me your hand, and we’ll dive under and join them.”

But Nan’s enthusiasm would not stretch to this. She fully understood his mood, but she would only sit in the moonlight and laugh, till presently Jerry, infected by her merriment, began to laugh too, and spun the ring he had filched from her high into the moonlight.

How it happened neither of them could ever afterwards say; but just at that critical moment when the ring was glittering in mid-air, some wayward current, or it might have been the water-sprite Jerry had just detected, lapped the water smartly against the punt and bumped it against the bank. Jerry exclaimed and nearly overbalanced backwards; Nan made a hasty grab at her falling property, but her hand only collided with his, making a similar grab at the same moment, and between them they sent the ring spinning far out into the moonlit ripples.

It disappeared before their dazzled eyes into that magic bar of light, and the girl and the boy turned and gazed at one another in speechless consternation.

Nan was the first to recover. She drew a deep breath, and burst into a merry peal of laughter.

“My dear boy, for pity’s sake don’t look like that! I never saw anything so absolutely tragic in my life. Why, what does it matter? I can buy another. I can buy fifty if I want them.”

Thus reassured, Jerry began to laugh too, but not with Nan’s abandonment. The incident had had a sobering effect upon him.