"I hope you will find, there, whatever you desire."
"I--hope so. Because if I should cross the boundary and find--nobody--there, it might make me unhappy for the rest of my life." And she looked up at him with a slight blush on her cheeks.
Then her features grew grave, her eyes serious, clear, and wistful.
"I think I am--learning to care--a great deal for you. Don't let me if I shouldn't. Tell me while there is time."
She turned as the housekeeper came with the lighted candles.
Guild stood aside for her to pass, his grave face lowered, silent before this young girl's candour and the troubled sincerity of her avowal.
In his own room, the lighted candle still in his hand, he stood motionless, brooding on what she had said.
And in his heart he knew that, although he had never liked any woman as much as he liked this young girl, he was not in love with her. And, somehow or other, he must tell her so--while there was still time.
He awoke in a flood of brightest sunshine; his bed, the floor, the walls, were bathed in it; netted reflections of water danced and quivered on the ceiling; and he lay looking at it, pleasantly conscious of green leaves stirring near his open window and of the golden splashing of a fountain.
There was a little bird out there, too, diligently practicing a few notes. The song was not elaborate. Translated, it seemed to consist of tweet! tweet! twilly-willy-willy! repeated an indefinite number of times.
Curious to discover what his surroundings resembled he rose and looked out of the curtained window. There was a grassy carrefour where a fountain spouted into a stone pool; all else was forest; a stream sparkled between tree-trunks, bridged where the drive crossed it.
To bathe and dress did not take him very long. In the hall, which seemed to be the main living-room below, he prowled about, examining a number of antlers and boar-heads mounted on the beamed and plastered walls. The former had been set up in German fashion, antlers, brow-antlers, and frontal bone; and these trophies appeared to him uninteresting--even a trifle ghastly when the bleached skull also was included.
The boars' heads were better, nothing extraordinary in size, but well-tusked. The taxidermy, however, was wretched.