"You--expected--all--the--time--to--be--married--in--July?"

"Why, yes," said the girl, with the faintest dimpling flicker of a smile. "Won't you congratulate me?" Very softly she drew her right hand away from me and held it out whitely to Sagner.

"Excuse me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed--my--hands."

"What?" stammered the girl. "W-h-a-t?"

"Excuse--me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed my hands."

Then, bowing very, very low, like a small boy at his first dancing-school, Sagner pa.s.sed from the house.

When I finally succeeded in steering my shaking knees and flopping feet down the long front steps and the pleasant, rose-bordered path, I found Sagner waiting for me at the gateway. Under the basking warmth of that mild May night his teeth were chattering as with an ague, and his ravenous face was like the face of a man whose soul is utterly glutted, but whose body has never even so much as tasted food and drink.

I put both my hands on his shoulders. "Sagner," I begged, "if there is anything under G.o.d's heaven that you want to-night--go and get it!"

He gave a short, gaspy laugh and wrenched himself free from me. "There is nothing _under_ G.o.d's heaven--to-night--that I want--except Madge Hubert," he said.

In another instant he was gone. With a wh-i-r and a wh-i-s-h and a snow-white fragrance, his trail cut abruptly through the apple-bush hedge. Then like a huge, black, sweet-scented sponge the darkening night seemed to swoop down and wipe him right off the face of the earth.

Very softly I knelt and pressed my ear to the ground. Across the young, tremulous, vibrant greensward I heard the throb-throb-throb of a man's feet--_running_.