Clementina

"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?"