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“It is singular,” Mary said, “and very sad.”

The midnight incident seemed to have come to a conclusion. It was a proper time for Gerald to say good-night and go away. He still stood on the opposite side of the half-open sash, around the edge of which appeared a small set of finger tips, which pulled the screen a little closer, showing that the girl was minded to shut herself in. But a hand twice as big opposed hers, gently yet strongly, and in doing so it touched hers; upon which she let go, and the window flew open.

“Oh, you mustn’t see me,” Mary exclaimed, as Gerald got a vanishing glimpse of the white-draped figure. “Good-night.”

“You will be afraid if left alone,” Gerald protested; “you can’t go to sleep, nervous as you must be.”

“I surely can’t go to sleep talking,” was her rejoinder, with the first touch of coquetry she had indulged in at Overlook.

“I won’t talk, then. I’ll only keep guard out here until daylight. Eph may return.”

“But there’s the watchman. It is his duty.”

“It would be my delight.”

That silenced the invisible inmate of the cabin. The moon shone into the square opening, but Mary was ensconced somewhere in the darkness that bordered the income of light.

“Should I apologize?” Gerald at length began again. “It is like this, Miss Warriner. I used to know how to behave politely to a lady. But for six years I’ve lived in wildernesses–in railroad camps–from Canada to Mexico. We’ve had no ladies in these rough places–no women, except once in a while some mannish washerwoman or cook. That’s what makes you so rare–so unexpected–that is why it would be a delight to be a patrolman outside your quarters–that is why I don’t wish to go away.”

“Oh!–oh! I am interesting because I am the only specimen of my sex at Overlook. That isn’t a doubtful compliment; it is no compliment at all. Good-night.”

“You misconstrue me altogether. I mean—-“

“I am sure you do not mean,” and now the tone was pleadingly serious, “to remain here at my window after I request you to go away. I am, as you have said, the only girl at Overlook.”

“If there were a thousand girls at Overlook—-“

“Not one of them, I trust, would prolong a dialogue with a young gentleman at night through the open window of her bedroom.”

Half in respectful deference to Mary’s unassailable statement of the rule of propriety applicable to the situation, and half in inconsiderate petulance at being dismissed, Gerald let go of the sash with an impulse that almost closed it. This time two miniature hands came out under the swinging frame. Would more than one hand have been naturally used? Was it not an awkward method of shutting a window? And Mary Warriner was not a clumsy creature. But there were the hands, and Gerald grasped them. They fluttered for freedom, like birds held captive in broad palms by completely caging fingers. Then he uncovered them, but for an instant kept them prisoners by encircling the wrists long enough to impetuously kiss them. Another second and they were gone, the window was closed, and they were alone.

He walked slowly away, accusing himself of folly and ungentlemanliness, and he felt better upon getting out of the clear, searching moonshine into the dim, obscuring shade of rocks and trees, among which the path wound crookedly. There rapid footsteps startled him, as though he was a skulking evildoer, and the swift approach of a man along an intersecting pathway, made him feel like taking to cowardly flight. But he recognized the monomaniac, Eph, who was in a breathless tremor.

“Mr. Heath, could a man walk to Dimmersville before the telegraph station there opens in the morning?” Eph asked, with several catches of breath and a reeling movement of physical weakness.

“You go to bed, Eph,” was the reply, meant to be soothing, “and I’ll see that your telegram goes from here the earliest thing in the morning. That won’t be more than six or seven hours from now.”