Clementina

"What if I watched to-night?" she said. "What if you slept?"

Wogan laughed the suggestion aside.

"I shall sleep very well," said he, "upon that top stair. I can count

upon waking, though only the lowest step tremble beneath a foot." This

he said, meaning not to sleep at all, as Clementina very well

understood. She leaned over the balustrade by Wogan's side and looked

upwards to the sky. The night was about them like a perfume of flowers.

A stream bubbled and sang over stones behind the inn. The courtyard

below was very silent. She laid a hand upon his sleeve and said again

in a pleading voice,-"Let me watch to-night. There is no danger. You are racked by

sleeplessness, and phantoms born of it wear the face of truth to you. We

are safe; we are in Italy. The stars tell me so. Let me watch to-night."

And at once she was startled. He withdrew his arm so roughly that it

seemed he flung off his hand; he spoke in a voice so hoarse and rough

she did not know it for his. And indeed it was a different man who now

confronted her,--a man different from the dutiful servant who had

rescued her, different even from the man who had held her so tenderly in

his arms on the road to Ala.

"Go to your room," said he. "You must not stay here."

She stepped back in her surprise and faced him.

"Every minute," he cried in a sort of exasperation, "I bid myself

remember the great gulf between you and me; every minute you forget it.

I make a curtain of your rank, your title, and--let us be frank--your

destiny; I hang the curtain up between us, and with a gentle hand you

tear it down. At the end of it all I am flesh and blood. Why did I sit

the whole long dreary day out on the bank by the roadside there? To

watch? I could not describe to you one traveller out of them all who

passed. Why, then? Ask yourself! It was not that I might stand by your

side afterwards in the glamour of an Italian night with the stars

pulsing overhead like a smile upon your lips, and all the world

whispering! You must not stay here!"

His eyes burnt upon her; his hands shook; from head to foot he was hot

and fierce with passion, and in spite of herself she kindled to it. That

he loved she knew before, but his description of his city of dreams had

given to him in her thoughts a touch of fancifulness, had led her to

conceive of his love as something dreamlike, had somehow spiritualised

him to the hindrance of her grasp of him as flesh and blood. Thus, she

understood, she might well have seemed to be trifling with him, though

nothing was further from her thoughts. But now he was dangerous; love

had made him dangerous, and to her. She knew it, and in spite of herself

she gloried in the knowledge. Her heart leaped into her eyes and shone

there responsive, unafraid. The next moment she lowered her head. But he

had seen the unmistakable look in her eyes. Even as she stood with her

bowed head, he could not but feel that every fibre in her body thrilled;

he could not but know the transfigured expression of her face.