Premonition chilled him there. Why should they ever be together again? Why was it not possible that this was his one night, the first and the last? So if it was to be the last, he would taste every minute of it, and make it his to keep.
"Well," he said consideringly, "so you are a charmer. You can charm a bird off a bush. That would be one of the first tricks."
She answered, in what he saw was real delight,--
"No, no. You can't tell what will become of the bird--in the end."
His voice sounded to her ineffably sad. Eager words rose again to her lips, and again she held them back, even against the glamour of that light and air.
"You broke your promise to me," she adventured presently.
"I said I might." He spoke with an embracing tenderness, as if to a child. She fancied he was smiling at her through the dusk. "Besides," he continued, "I shan't come to see you there, anyway; I have decided that."
It seemed quite just and natural that she should meet him there. Why should she disclaim it?
"But you won't go to the house to see your grandmother?"
"Oh, I see grannie. She wakes before day. We have a little talk every morning while you're asleep. The last time"--he stopped.
"The last time I passed your door I heard your step inside. When I went out at the front door, I heard you on the stairs." It had apparently enormous significance to him. "The next morning I came earlier," said Osmond, in a low tone, "but I dropped a handful of rose leaves at your sill."
"But I didn't," she said. "I didn't step on them."
"I gathered them up very carefully in my handkerchief and left them in my bureau drawer."
"Now, why"--he spoke curiously--"why did you do that?"
"I hate to throw away flowers. They are precious to me."
There was silence again, and then he said reprovingly,--
"You mustn't get up earlier to catch me scattering my rose leaves. That wouldn't be fair."
"That was what I was thinking." She mused a moment. "No, I suppose it wouldn't be fair."
"You see we shall have to play fair every minute. That's the way to be good playmates."
"That's what we are, isn't it--playmates?"
"It's about the size of it." Then he asked her gravely, across the distance between them, "Don't you hear a nightingale?"
"But there aren't any nightingales in New England!"