vacancy. They stared at it. Then they looked up at the original. It was no more interesting than its watery ghost, but they both knew that to ignore the moon on such an evening would be an insensitive, almost a brutish thing to do.
That Irma knew of an arbour in the garden was not her fault. And it was not her fault that Bellgrove knew it not. Yet she blushed inwardly, as casually turning to left and right at the corners of paths, or under flower- loaded trellises, she guided the headmaster circuitously yet firmly in its direction.
Bellgrove, who had in his mind's eye just such a place as he was now unwittingly approaching, had felt it better that they should perambulate together in silence, so that when he had a chance to sit and rest his feet, his deep voice, when he brought it forth again from the depths of his chest, should have its full value.
On rounding a great moon-capped lilac bush and coming suddenly upon the arbour, Irma started, and drew back. Bellgrove came to a halt beside her. Finding her face was turned away from him, he gazed absently at the hard boulder-like bun of iron-grey hair which, with not a hair out of place, shone in the moonlight. It was nothing, however, for a man to dwell upon, and turning from her to the arbour which had caused her trepidation, he straightened himself, and turning his right foot out at a rather more aggressive angle, he struck an attitude, which he knew nothing about, for it was the unconscious equivalent of what was going on in his mind.
He saw himself as the type of man who would never take advantage of a defenceless woman, greathearted, and understanding. Someone a damsel might trust in a lonely wood. But he also saw himself as a buck. His youth had been so long ago that he could remember nothing of it but he presumed, erroneously, that he had tasted the purple fruit, had broken hearts and hymens, had tossed flowers to ladies on balconies, had drunk champagne out of their shoes and generally been irresistible.
He allowed her fingers to fall from his arm. It was at moments like this that he must give her a sense of freedom only to draw her further into the rich purdah of his benevolence.
He held the tabs of his white gown near the shoulders.
'Can you not smell the lilac, madam,' he said - 'the moonlit lilac?'
Irma turned.
'I must be honest with you, mustn't I, Mr Bellgrove?' she said. 'If I said I could smell it, when I couldn't. I would be false to you, and false to myself. Let us not start 'that' way. No, Mr Bellgrove, I cannot smell it. I have a bit of a cold.'
Bellgrove had the sense of having to start life all over again.
'You women are delicate creatures,' he said after a long pause. 'You must take care of yourselves.'
'Why are you talking in the plural, Mr Bellgrove?'
'My dear madam,' he replied slowly, and then, after a pause, 'my... dear... madam,' he said again. As he heard his voice repeat the three words for the second time, it struck him that to leave them as they were - inconsequent, rudderless, without preface or parenthesis, was by far the best thing he could do. He lapsed into silence and the silence was thrilling - the silence which to break with an answer to her question would be to make a commonplace out of what was magic.
He would not answer her. He would play with her with his venerable brain. She must realize from the first that she could not always expect replies to her questions - that his thoughts might be elsewhere, in regions where it would be impossible for her to follow him - or that her questions were (for all his love for her and her for him) not worth answering.
The night poured in upon them from every side - a million million cubic miles of it. O, the glory of standing with one's love, naked, as it were, on a spinning marble, while the spheres ran flaming through the universe!
Involuntarily they moved together into the arbour and sat down on a bench which they found in the darkness. This darkness was intensely rich and velvety. It was as though they were in a cavern, save that the depths were dramatized by a number of small and brilliant pools of moonlight. Pranked for the most part to the rear of the arbour these livid pools were at first a little disturbing, for portions of themselves were lit up with blatant emphasis. This arbitrary illumination had to be accepted, however, for Bellgrove, raising his eyes to where the vents in the roof let through the moonlight, could think of no way by which he could seal them.
From Irma's point of view the dappled condition of the cavernous arbour was both calming and irritating at the same time.
Calming, in that to enter a cave of clotted midnight, with not so much as a flicker of light to gauge her distance from her partner would have been terrifying even with her knowledge of, and confidence in, so reliable and courteous a gentleman as her escort. This dappled arbour was not so fell a place. The pranked lights, more livid, it is true, than gay, removed, nevertheless, that sense of terror only known to fugitives or those benighted in a shire of ghouls.
Strong as was her feeling of gratification that the dark was broken, yet a sense of irritation as strong as her relief fought in her flat bosom for sovereignty. This irritation, hardly understandable to anyone who has neither Irma's figure, nor a vivid picture of the arbour in mind, was caused by the maddening way in which the lozenges of radiance fell upon her body.
She had taken out a small mirror in the darkness, more from nervousness than anything else and in holding it up, saw nothing in the dark air before her but a long sharp segment of light. The mirror itself was quite invisible, as was the hand and arm that held it, but the detached and luminous reflection of her nose hovered before her in the darkness. At first she did not know what it was. She moved her head a little and saw in front of her one of her small weak eyes glittering like quicksilver, a startling thing to observe under any conditions, but infinitely more so when the organ is one's own.
The rest of her was indistinguishable midnight save for a pair of large and spectral feet. She shuffled them, but this blotch of moonlight was the largest in the arbour and to evade it involved a muscular strain quite insufferable.
Bellgrove's entire head was luminous. He was, more than ever before, a major prophet. His white hair positively blossomed.
Irma, knowing that this wonderful and searching light which was transfiguring the head was something that must not be missed - something in fact that she should pore upon - made a great effort to forget herself as a true lover should - but something in her rebelled against so exclusive a concentration upon her
