"Even in our short journey," said Clementina, "how it climbed hillsides
angle upon angle, how it swept through the high solitudes of ice where
no trees grow, where silence lives; how it dropped down into green
valleys and the noise of streams! And it still sweeps on, through dark
and light, a glimmer at night, a glare in the midday, between lines of
poplars, hidden amongst vines, through lighted cities, down to Venice
and the sea. If one could travel it, never retracing a step, pitching a
tent by the roadside when one willed! That were freedom!" She stopped
with a remarkable abruptness. She turned her eyes out of the window for
a little. Then again she asked,-"How long till morning?"
"But one more hour."
She came back into the room and seated herself at the table.
"You gave me some hint at Innspruck of an adventurous ride from Ohlau,"
and she drew her breath sharply at the word, as though the name with all
its associations struck her a blow, "into Strasbourg. Tell me its
history. So will this hour pass."
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.
"No."
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.
"You saw--?" he began.
"No one," said she, bending her dark eyes full upon him. "Will you close
the shutter?"