They wander down from the porch and into the gardens, past benches where
the talk that is going on seems to be chiefly in throaty undertones and
halts nervously as their steps crunch past.
"The beautiful and damned!" says Oliver amusedly, then a little louder
_"Amusez vous bien, mes enfants_" at a small and carefully modulated
shriek that comes from the other side of the low hedge, "The night's still
young. But Good Lord, isn't there _any_ place in the whole works where two
respectable people can sit without feeling like chaperones?"
They find one finally--it is at the far end of the gardens--a seat the
only reason for whose obvious desertion seems to be, comments Oliver, that
some untactful person has strung a dim but still visible lantern directly
above it--and relapses upon it silently. It is not until the first
cigarettes of both are little red dying stars on the grass beside them
that either really starts to talk.
"Cool," says Oliver, stretching his arms. The night lies over them light
as spray--a great swimming bath and quietness of soft black, hushed
silver--above them the whole radiant helmet of heaven is white with its
stars.
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