It was no unusual thing for Canterton to spend hours in the gardens and nurseries after dark. He was something of a star-gazer and amateur astronomer¹, but it was the life of the earth by night that drew him out with lantern, collecting-box and hand lens. Often he went moth² hunting, for the history of many a moth is also the history of some pestilence³ that cankers and blights⁴ the green growth of some tree or shrub⁵. No one who has not gone out by night with a lantern to search and to observe has any idea of the strange, creeping life that wakes with the darkness. It is like the life of another world, thousand-legged, slimy, grotesque⁶, repulsive⁷, and yet full of significance to the Nature student who goes out to use his eyes.  
Canterton had some of Darwin’s thoroughness and patience. He had spent hours watching centipedes or the spore⁸ changes of myxomycetes on a piece of dead fir bough⁹. He experimented with various compounds for the extinction¹¹ of slugs, and studied the ways of wood-lice and earth worms. All very ridiculous, no doubt, in a man whose income ran into thousands a year. Sometimes he had been able to watch a shrew at work, or perhaps a queer snuffling sound warned him of the nearness of a hedgehog. This was the utilitarian¹² side of his vigils. He was greatly interested, æsthetically and scientifically, in the sleep of plants and flowers, and in the ways of those particular plants whose loves are consummated¹³ at night, shy white virgins¹⁴ with perfumed bodies who leave the day to their bolder and gaudier¹⁵ fellows. Some moth played Eros. He studied plants in their sleep, the change of posture¹⁶ some of them adopted, the drooping¹⁷ of the leaves, the closing of the petals¹⁸. All sorts of things happened of which the ordinary gardener had not the slightest knowledge. There were atmospheric²⁰ changes to be recorded, frosts, dew falls and the like. Very often Canterton would be up before sunrise, watching which birds were stirring first, and who was the first singer to send a twitter of song through the grey gate of the dawn.
 
But as he walked through the fir woods towards Orchards²¹ Corner, his eyes were not upon the ground or turned to the things that were near him. Wisps of a red sunset still drifted about the west, and the trunks of the trees were barred in black against a yellow afterglow. Soon a full moon would be coming up. Heavy dew was distilling²² out of the quiet air and drawing moist perfumes out of the thirsty summer earth.
 
Blue dusk covered the heathlands beyond Orchards Corner, and the little tree-smothered house was invisible. A light shone out from a window as Canterton walked up the lane. Something white was moving in the dusk, drifting to and fro across the garden like a moth from flower to flower.
 
Canterton’s hand was on the gate. Never before had night fallen for him with such a hush²³ of listening enchantment²⁴. The scents²⁵ seemed more subtle, the freshness of the falling dew indescribably delicious. He passed an empty chair standing²⁶ on the lawn, and found a white figure waiting.
 
“I wondered whether you would come.”
 
“I did not wonder. What a wash of dew, and what scents.”
 
“And the stillness. I wanted to see the moon hanging in the fir woods.”
 
“The rim¹⁰ will just be topping the horizon.”
 
“You know the time by all the timepieces in Arcady.”
 
“I suppose I was born to see and to remember.”
 
They went into the little drawing-room that was Eve’s despair when she felt depressed²⁷. This room was Mrs. Carfax’s lararium, containing all the ugly trifles that she treasured, and some of the ugliest furniture that ever was manufactured. John Carfax had been something of an amateur artist, and a very crude one at that. He had specialised in genre²⁸ work, and on the walls were studies of a butcher’s shop, a fruit stall, a fish stall, a collection of brass²⁹ instruments on a table covered with a red cloth, and a row of lean, stucco-fronted houses, each with a euonymus hedge and an iron gate in front of it. The carpet was a Kidderminster, red and yellow flowers on a black ground, and the chairs were upholstered in green plush. Every available shelf and ledge¹⁹ seemed to be crowded with knick-knacks, and a stuffed pug reclined under a glass case in the centre of a walnut³⁰ chiffonier.
 
Eve understood her mother’s affection for all this bric-à-brac, but to-night, when she came in out of the dew-washed dusk, the room made her shudder³¹. She wondered what effect it would have on Canterton, though she knew he was far too big a man to sneer³².
 
Mrs. Carfax, in black dress and white lace cap, sat in one of the green plush arm-chairs. She was always pleased to see people, and to chatter³³ with amiable³⁴ facility. And Canterton could be at his best on such occasions. The little old lady thought him “so very nice.”
 
“It is so good of you to come down and see Eve’s paintings. Eve, dear, fetch your portfolio³⁵. I am so sorry I could not come to Mrs. Canterton’s garden party, but I have to be so very careful, because of my heart. I get all out of breath and in a flutter so easily. Do sit down. I think that is a comfortable chair.”
 
Canterton sat down, and Eve went for her portfolio.
 
“My husband was quite an artist, Mr. Canterton, though an amateur. These are some of his pictures.”
 
“So the gift is inherited!”
 
“I don’t think Eve draws so well as her father did. You can see——”
 
Canterton got up and went round looking at John Carfax’s pictures. They were rather extraordinary productions............