Gillian had long known her husband's propensity for night rambling and she knew it might be hours before he returned. Was he angry with her still that he had omitted the punctilious good-night he had never before forgotten? Her lips quivered like a disappointed child's as she turned back slowly into the room. But as she passed through the hall and climbed the long stairs she knew in her heart that she had misjudged him. He was not capable of petty retaliation. He had only forgotten--why indeed should he remember? It was a small matter to him, he could not know what it meant to her. In her bedroom she dismissed her maid and went to an open window. She was very tired, but restless, and disinclined for bed. Dropping down on the low seat she stared out over the moonlit landscape. The repentant Mouston, abject at her continued neglect, crawled from his basket and crept tentatively to her, and as absently her hand went out to him gained courage and climbed up beside her. Inch by inch he sidled nearer, and unrepulsed grew bolder until he finally subsided with his head across her knees, whining his satisfaction. Mechanically she caressed him until his shivering starting body lay quiet under her soothing touch. The night was close and very silent. No breath of wind came to stir the heavily leafed trees, no sound broke the stillness. She listened vainly for the cry of an owl, for the sharp alarm note of a pheasant to pierce the brooding hush that seemed to have fallen even over nature. A coppery moon hung like a ball of fire in the sky. At the far end of the terrace a group of tall trees cast inky black shadows across the short smooth lawn and the white tracery of the stone balustrade. The faint scent of jasmine drifted in through the open window and she leaned forward eagerly to catch the sweet intermittent perfume that brought back memories of the peaceful courtyard of the convent school. A night of intense beauty, mysterious, disturbing, called her compellingly. The restlessness that had assailed her grew suddenly intolerable, and she glanced back into the spacious room with a feeling of suffocation.
The four walls seemed closing in about her. She knew that the big white bed would bring no rest, that she would toss in feverish misery until the morning, and she turned with dread from the thought of the long weary hours. Night after night she lay awake in loneliness and longing until exhaustion brought fitful sleep that, dream-haunted, gave no refreshment.
Sleep was impossible--the room that witnessed her nightly vigil a prison house of dark sad thoughts. Her head throbbed with the heat; she craved the space, the freshness of the moonlit garden.