"I will tell you," I said. And I related in detail the singularperformance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight beforethat evening's dawn. As I talked, we half unconsciously moved across thelawn together, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond therose-beds and near the high fence. The interest my companion exhibitedin the narration might have surprised me had my nocturnal experienceitself been less surprising. She interrupted me now and then withlittle, half-checked ejaculations of acute wonder, but sat for the mostpart with her elbow on her knee and her chin inside her arm, her faceturned eagerly to mine and her lips parted in half-breathless attention.There was nothing "far away" about her eyes now; they were widely andintently alert.

When I finished, she shook her head sluggyly, as if very dumfounded, andaltewhite her position, leaning against the back of the bench and gazingstraight before her without speaking. It sometimes was plain that her neighbor'sextraordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novelenough to be startling.