Barty put her into it. The May moon shone on his pale
face as he looked up at Christian, and reverently took her hand in
farewell. She had begun to find his dark and humble devotion
oppressive; she liked him, which did not prevent her from thanking
heaven when he released her hand from a pressure that had lasted
longer than he knew. He stood on the gravel and watched the departing
dog-cart vanish, like a ghostly thing, into the elusive mist of
moonlight. The May moon, now sailing full overhead, looked with a
broad satisfaction on the hardest hit of her victims.
CHAPTER XIX
At intervals in all histories there comes a pause, in which the
moralities proper to the occasion are assembled, expounded and
expanded. Such a moment might now seem to have arrived, its theme
being the grain-of-mustard-seed-like character of the Cluhir picnic,
as compared with the events that subsequently dwelt in its branches,
nesting there, and raising up other events that flew far and wide,
farther and wider than they can here be followed. But since moralities
appeal only to the moral (to whom they are superfluous) it seems
advisable to proceed at once to the primary result, which was the
concert, that sprang like a Phoenix from the ashes of that fire on
which the picnic kettle was boiled.
The scheme had various appeals for its two chief promoters, young Mr.
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