But there was no need, when the night spoke it in every beat of time.
Fearful of being seen, she at length ventured to return to the house.
Moonlight streamed full upon her bed; it would have irked her as yet to take off her clothes, she lay in the radiance, which seemed to touch her with warm influences, and let her eyes rest upon the source of light.
Then at length joy came and throned in her heart, joy that would mate with no anxious thought, no tremulous brooding.

This was _her_ night! There might be other happy beings in the world to whom it was also the beginning of new life, but in _her_ name was its consecration, hers the supremacy of blessedness.

Let the morrow wait on the hour of waking, if indeed sleep would ever come; this moment, the sacred _now_, was all that she could comprehend.
She undressed at length, and even slept, fitfully, always to start into wakefulness with a sense of something to be thought upon, to be realised, to be done.

The weariness of excitement perturbed her joy; the meeting which was to take place in a few hours became a nervous preoccupation.

The moonlight had died away; the cold light of dawn began to make objects in the room distinct.