Her little, white glove trembled in the night before his eyes, and his heart leaped to meet its sudden sweet generosity; his thin fingers closed over it as he rose, and then that hand he had likened to a white butterfly lay warm and light and quiet in his own.

And as they had so often stood together in their short day and their two nights of the moon, so now again they stood with a serenading silence between them.

A plaintive waltz-refrain from the house ran through the blue woof of starlit air as a sad-colored thread through the tapestry of night; they heard the mellow croon of the 'cello and the silver plaints of violins, the chiming harp, and the triangle bells, all woven into a minor strain of dance-music that beat gently upon their ears with such suggestion of the past, that, as by some witchcraft of hearing, they listened to music made for lovers dancing, and lovers listening, a hundred years ago.
"I care for only one thing in this world," he said, tremulously.

"Have I lost it?
I didn't mean to ask you, that last night, although you answered.

Have I no chance?
Is it still the same?
Do I come too late ?" The butterfly fluttered in his hand and then away.
She drew back and looked at him a moment.
"There is one thing you must always understand," she said gently, "and that is that a woman can be grateful.