I, alone, must hover about the gates, or steal like a thief into your garden to hear you from a distance.

Listen to me--just this once--for a moment ?" "I cannot listen," she said firmly; and stood quite still.

She was now in deep shadow.
"I will not believe you merciless! You would not condemn the meanest criminal unheard!" Remembering that she was so lately from the convent, he ventured this speech in a deep, thrilling voice, only to receive a distinct shock for his pains, for she greeted it with an irrepressible, most unexpected peal of contralto laughter, and his lips parted slightly with the surprise of it.
They parted much farther in the next instant--in good truth, it may be stated of the gentleman that he was left with his mouth open--for, suddenly leaning toward him out of the shadow into the light, her face shining as a cast of tragedy, she cried in a hoarse whisper: "Are you a murderer ?" And with that and a whisk of her skirts, and a footfall on the gravel path, she was gone.

He stood dumbfounded, poor comedian, having come to play the chief role, but to find the scene taken out of his hands.

Then catching the flutter of her wrap, as she disappeared into the darkness of the veranda, he cried in a loud, manly voice: "You are a dear!" As he came out into the street through a gap in the hedge, he paused, drawing his cloak about him, and lifted his face to the eastern moon.