She laid emphasis
upon the pronoun and the nouns. It seemed the last line of some
delicious runic verse:

"In the _heart_ of the _wood_--dwell _I_...."

And it flashed across him: That living, moving, inhabited pine wood
was her thought. It was thus she saw it. Her nature flung back to a
life she understood, a life that needed, claimed her. The ostentatious
and artificial values that surrounded her, she denied, even as the
distinguished house-party of her ambitious, masquerading family
neglected her. Of course she was unnoticed by them, just as a swallow
or a wild-rose were unnoticed. He knew her secret then, for she had told it to him. It was his own
secret too. They were akin, as the birds and animals were akin. They
belonged together in some free and open life, natural, wild, untamed. That unhampered life was flowing about them now, rising, beating with
delicious tumult in her veins and his, yet innocent as the sunlight and
the wind--because it was as freely recognised. "Elspeth!" he cried, "come, take me with you! We'll go at once. Come--hurry--before we forget to be happy, or remember to be wise
again----!" His words stopped half-way towards completion, for a perfume floated
past him, born of the summer dusk, perhaps, yet sweet with a
penetrating magic that made his senses reel with some remembered joy. No flower, no scented garden bush delivered it. It was the perfume of
young, spendthrift life, sweet with the purity that reason had not yet
stained. The girl moved closer. Gathering her loose hair between her
fingers, she brushed his cheeks and eyes with it, her slim, warm body
pressing against him as she leaned over laughingly. "In the darkness," she whispered in his ear; "when the moon puts the
house upon the statue!" And he understood. Her world lay behind the vulgar, staring day. He
turned. He heard the flutter of skirts--just caught the grey stockings,
swift and light, as they flew behind the rhododendron masses. And she
was gone. He stood a long time, leaning upon that five-barred gate.... It
was the dressing-gong that recalled him at length to what seemed the
present. By the conservatory door, as he went slowly in, he met his
distinguished cousin--who was helping the girl he himself was to marry
to enjoy her "final fling." He looked at his cousin. He realised
suddenly that he was merely vicious. There was no sun and wind, no
flowers--there was depravity only, lust instead of laughter, excitement
in place of happiness. It was calculated, not spontaneous. His mind was
in it. Without joy it was. He was not natural. "Not a girl in the whole lot fit to look at," he exclaimed with peevish
boredom, excusing himself stupidly for his illicit conduct. "I'm
off in the morning." He shrugged his blue-blooded shoulders. "These
millionaires! Their shooting's all right, but their mixum-gatherum
week-ends--bah!" His gesture completed all he had to say about this one
in particular. He glanced sharply, nastily, at his companion. "_You_
look as if you'd found something!" he added, with a suggestive grin. "Or have you seen the ghost that was paid for with the house?" And he
guffawed and let his eyeglass drop. "Lady Hermione will be asking for
an explanation--eh?" "Idiot!" replied Heber, and ran upstairs to dress for dinner. But the word was wrong, he remembered, as he closed his door. It was
lunatic he had meant to say, yet something more as well. He saw the
smart, modern philanderer somehow as a beast. 2

It was nearly midnight when he went up to bed, after an evening of
intolerable amusement. The abandoned moral attitude, the common
rudeness, the contempt of all others but themselves, the ugly jests,
the horseplay of tasteless minds that passed for gaiety, above all the
shamelessness of the women that behind the cover of fine breeding aped
emancipation, afflicted him to a boredom that touched desperation. He understood now with a clarity unknown before. As with his cousin,
so with these. They took life, he saw, with a brazen effrontery they
thought was freedom, while yet it was life that they denied. He felt
vampired and degraded; spontaneity went out of him. The fact that
the geography of bedrooms was studied openly seemed an affirmation
of vice that sickened him. Their ways were nauseous merely. He
escaped--unnoticed. He locked his door, went to the open window, and looked out into the
night--then started. For silver dressed the lawn and park, the shadow
of the building lay dark across the elaborate garden, and the moon, he
noticed, was just high enough to put the house upon the statue. The
chimney-stacks edged the pedestal precisely. "Odd!" he exclaimed. "Odd that I should come at the very moment----!" then smiled as he realised how his proposed adventure would be
misinterpreted, its natural innocence and spirit ruined--if he were
seen. "And some one would be sure to see me on a night like this. There
are couples still hanging about in the garden." And he glanced at the
shrubberies and secret paths that seemed to float upon the warm June
air like islands. He stood for a moment framed in the glare of the electric light, then
turned back into the room; and at that instant a low sound like a
bird-call rose from the lawn below. It was soft and flutey, as though
some one played two notes upon a reed, a piping sound. He had been
seen, and she was waiting for him. Before he knew it, he had made an
answering call, of oddly similar kind, then switched the light out. Three minutes later, dressed in simpler clothes, with a cap pulled over
his eyes, he reached the back lawn by means of the conservatory and the
billiard-room. He paused a moment to look about him. There was no one,
although the lights were still ablaze. "I am an idiot," he chuckled to
himself. "I'm acting on instinct!" He ran. The sweet night air bathed him from head to foot; there was strength
and cleansing in it. The lawn shone wet with dew. He could almost smell
the perfume of the stars. The fumes of wine, cigars and artificial
scent were left behind, the atmosphere exhaled by civilisation, by
heavy thoughts, by bodies overdressed, unwisely stimulated--all, all
forgotten. He passed into a world of magical enchantment. The hush of
the open sky came down. In black and white the garden lay, brimmed full
with beauty, shot by the ancient silver of the moon, spangled with the
stars' old-gold. And the night wind rustled in the rhododendron masses
as he flew between them. In a moment he was beside the statue, engulfed now by the shadow of
the building, and the girl detached herself silently from the blur of
darkness. Two arms were flung about his neck, a shower of soft hair
fell on his cheek with a heady scent of earth and leaves and grass, and
the same instant they were away together at full speed--towards the
pine wood. Their feet were soundless on the soaking grass. They went
so swiftly that they made a whir of following wind that blew her hair
across his eyes.