They had only one more talk, in the real sense, before their marriage, and that was an unpremeditated but natural outrush of the vague jealousy which slumbered at the core of McKeith's love.

It was on the last evening, and it made an ineffaceable impression upon him.
They were standing, after dinner, close together by the balustrade of the terrace.
It was a clear night, with a young moon, and the stars set deep in blue so dark that the sky gave an impression of solidity.

The air was full of scents and of a soft balminess, with the faint nip of an early May in the Southern hemisphere.
He had folded her light scarf round the child-like shoulders.

The touch of his big hand stirred her--it had not often done so in that peculiar way.

It roused something in her that she had thought dead or drugged to sleep, and took her back for an emotional moment to a certain late summer evening at Hurlingham, when she and Willoughby Maule had stood in the garden together under the stars.