of losing an advantage acquired (the thrill of which had just been so prodigious) as on my consciousness that she addressed me with a reproach. “You naughty: where have you been?”—instead of challenging her own irregularity I found myself arraigned and explaining. She herself explained, for that matter, with the loveliest, eagerest simplicity. She had known suddenly, as she lay there, that I was out of the room, and had jumped up to see what had become of me. I had dropped, with the joy of her reappearance, back into my chair—feeling then, and then only, a little faint; and she had pattered straight over to me, thrown herself upon my knee, given herself to be held with the flame of the candle full in the wonderful little face that was still flushed with sleep. I remember closing my eyes an instant, yieldingly, consciously, as before the excess of something beautiful that shone out of the blue of her own. “You were looking for me out of the window?” I said. “You thought I might be walking in the grounds?”
“Well, you know, I thought someone was”—she never blanched as she smiled out that at me.
Oh, how I looked at her now! “And did you see anyone?”
“Ah, no!” she returned, almost with the full
