Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/117

Rh leave you here and find you in Westchester!" he stammered.

"You need not go," she said, quietly. "If you will telephone to the house and ask somebody to go out to the pergola—"

"No," he said, "I will go;—I will go anywhere on earth for you."

He stood up, his senses in a whirl. She rose too, leaning lightly on the balustrade.

"Thank you," she said, sweetly. "When you awake me, give me this." She held out the Signum Veneris; and he took it, and bending his head slowly, raised it to his lips.

It was almost morning when he entered his own house. In a dull trance he dressed, turned again to the stairs, and crept out into the shadowy street.

People began to pass him; an early electric tram whizzed up Forty-second Street as he entered the railway station. Presently he found himself in a car, clutching his ticket in one hand, her ring in the other.

"It is I who am mad, not she," he muttered as the train glided from the station, through the long yard, dim in morning mist, where green and crimson lanterns still sparkled faintly.

Again he pressed the Signum Veneris to his lips. "It is I who am mad—love-mad!" he whispered as the far treble warning of the whistle aroused him and sent him stumbling out into the soft fresh morning air.

The rising sun smote him full in the eyes as he came in sight of the clubhouse among the still green trees, and the dew on the lawn flashed like the gems of the Signum Veneris on the ring he held so tightly.

Across the club-house lawn stood another house, circled with gardens in full bloom; and to the left, among young trees, the white columns of a pergola glistened, tinted with rose from the early sun.

There was not a soul astir as he crossed the lawn and entered the garden, brushing the dew from overweighted blossoms as he passed.

Suddenly, at a turn in the path, he came upon the pergola, and saw a brilliant hammock hanging in the shadow.

Over the hammock's fringe something light and fluffy fell in folds like the billowy frills of a ball gown. He stumbled forward, dazed, incredulous, and stood trembling for an instant.

Then, speechless, he sank down beside her, and dropped the ring into the palm of her half-closed and unconscious hand.

A ray of sunlight fell across her hair; slowly her blue eyes unclosed, smiling divinely.

And in her partly open palm the Sign of Venus glimmered like dew silvering a budding rose.