Page:Tales of John Oliver Hobbes.djvu/34

18 real (a longing which, by the bye, is more apt to show itself in definitions than deeds)—would fain give the word. In form she was tall and slender—rather too slender, perhaps, for statuesque symmetry. But before Provence could persuade himself that there was a something in her expression which did not at all events forbid him to draw nearer, a window was heard to open, and a loud voice, feminine, aristocratic, and shrill, drowned the sweetness of the nightingale, "Cynthia! Cynthia!" The girl sighed, smiled with ineffable graciousness on heaven and earth, glanced at the mortal on the opposite side of the road, and disappeared in the shadow of the garden. Provence felt that the night had grown dark. But the moon was still shining upon the duckpond.