The
rest of her person was suggested dimly as high as her waist. She sat
on a chair, and the gloom of the low eaves descended upon her head and
shoulders. She didn't stir.
"You haven't gone to sleep here?" he asked.
"Oh, no! I was waiting for you--in the dark."
Heyst, on the top step, leaned against a wooden pillar, after moving the
lantern to one side.
"I have been thinking that it is just as well you had no light. But
wasn't it dull for you to sit in the dark?"
"I don't need a light to think of you." Her charming voice gave a value
to this banal answer, which had also the merit of truth. Heyst laughed
a little, and said that he had had a curios experience. She made no
remark. He tried to figure to himself the outlines of her easy pose.
A spot of dim light here and there hinted at the unfailing grace of
attitude which was one of her natural possessions.
She had thought of him, but not in connection with the strangers. She
had admired him from the first; she had been attracted by his warm
voice, his gentle eye, but she had felt him too wonderfully difficult to
know. He had given to life a savour, a movement, a promise mingled with
menaces, which she had not suspected were to be found in it--or, at any
rate, not by a girl wedded to misery as she was. She said to herself
that she must not be irritated because he seemed too self-contained, and
as if shut up in a world of his own.
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