There, with his face--and all that he
would have it say--fair and bright in the moonlight, stood Paul. He
opened his arms.
"Janet," he said.
With a little cry, and a sob, the girl rushed into them.
I went away back to my own room. I am sure it is superfluous to explain
my little plot: that it was not a photograph, but an old miniature of
Paul I had seen Janet with--an old miniature which I had painted on
ivory myself in the far-distant days. I am sure Paul never had a
photograph taken. Of course it was because I had recognised this that I
wanted Paul to wait in the library; but he was a better fencer than I,
and made me admit more than I intended. I sat down now, a world of old
memories whirling through my brain. I mixed this that I had just
seen--with something very like it in the long, long past--with the crash
of pots, and another figure that had thrown itself into Paul's arms.
There was the old room: _Janet_ had been said there, too; and the lips
through which the word had trembled were the same: and the voice was the
same also. Only the figure that had darted forward--was different.
I did not go to bed at all that night; but sat looking out over the
quiet, moon-lit garden and over the fields beyond, where the corn-crake
was calling, calling; the river slipping like a silver thread at the
far-away end of them; and patter, patter out and into the back-garden at
Glasgow went the little feet again; and to and fro ran the fair-haired
little lassie in the dirty pink cotton, tugging me this way and that by
the hand; and such a singing and swinging went on about the stairs.
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