Three Weeks

By this time Paul was more or less intoxicated with excitement, he had lost all sense of time and place. It seemed as if he had known her always--that there never had been a moment when she had not filled the whole of his horizon.

They were both silent for a couple of minutes. As far as he could gather from her inscrutable face, she was weighing things--what things?

Suddenly she sprang up, one of those fine movements of hers full of cat-like grace.

"Paul," she said, "listen," and she spoke rather fast. "You are so young, so young--and I shall hurt you--probably. Won't you go now--while there is yet time? Away from Lucerne, back to Paris--even back to England. Anywhere away from me."

She put her hand on his arm, and looked up into his eyes. And there were tears in hers. And now he saw that they were grey.

He was moved as never yet in all his life.

"I will not!" he said. "I may be young, but to-night I know--I want to live! And I will chance the hurt, because I know that only you can teach me--just how--"'

Then his voice broke, and he bent down and covered her hand with kisses.

She quivered a little and drew away. She picked up a great bunch of tuberoses, and broke off all their tops. "There, take them!" she said, pressing them into his hands, and those against his heart. "Take them and go--and dream of me. You have chosen. Dream of me to-night and remember--there is to-morrow."

Then she glided back from him, and before he realised it she had gone noiselessly away through another door.

Paul stood still. The room swam; his head swam. Then he stumbled out on to the terrace, under the night sky, the white blossoms still pressed against his heart.

He must have walked about for hours. The grey dawn was creeping over the silent world when at last he went back to the hotel and to his bed.

There he slept and dreamt--never a dream! For youth and health are glorious things. And he was tired out.

The great sun was high in the heavens when next he awoke. And the room was full of the scent of tuberoses, scattered on the pillow beside him. Presently, when his blue eyes began to take in the meaning of things, he remembered and bounded up. For was not this the commencement of his first real day?