He told her as he walked about the room, though his heart was not in the telling, nor hers in the hearing, until he came to relate the story of his escape from the inn a mile or so beyond Stuttgart. He described how he hid in the garden, how he crossed the rich level of lawn to the lighted window, how to his surprise he was admitted without a question by an old bookish gentleman--and thereupon he ceased so suddenly that Clementina turned her head aside and listened.
"Did you hear a step?" she asked in a low voice.
And they both listened. No noise came to their ears but the brawling of the torrent. That, however, filled the room, drowning all the natural murmurs of the night.
"Indeed, one would not hear a company of soldiers," said Clementina. She crossed to the window.
"Yet you heard my step, and it waked you," said Wogan, as he followed her.
"I listened for it in my sleep," said she.
For a second time that night they stood side by side looking upon darkness and the spangled sky. Only there was no courtyard with its signs of habitation. Clementina drew herself away suddenly from the sill. Wogan at once copied her example.
"No one," said she, bending her dark eyes full upon him. "Will you close the shutter?"
Wogan drew back instinctively. He had a sense that this open window, though there was no one to spy through it, was in some way a security. Suppose that he closed it! That mere act of shutting himself and her apart, though it gave not one atom more of privacy, still had a semblance of giving it. He was afraid. He said,--
"There is no need. Who should spy on us? What would it matter if we were spied upon?"
From the quiet, level voice he could infer nothing of the thought behind the request; and her unwavering eyes told him nothing.
"Because I am afraid, as you are," said she, and she shivered. "You would not have it shut. I am afraid while it stays open. There is too much expectation in the night. Those great black pines stand waiting; the stars are very bright and still, they wait, holding their breath. It seems to me the whirl of the earth has stopped. Never was there a night so hushed in expectation;" and these words too she spoke without a falter or a lifting note, breathing easily like a child asleep, and not changing her direct gaze from Wogan's face. "I am afraid," she continued, "of you and me. I am the more afraid;" and Wogan set the shutter in its place and let the bar fall. Clementina with a breath of relief came back to her seat at the table.