"Lath or steel?" Was I playing a man's part, or was I the mere bond-slave of a petty pride? "That can be explained," she had said. What if it could? Then the sword would be proved lath indeed! Just to salve my vanity I should have wasted my life--and only my life? I saw her lips trembling as the thought shot through me.
What if those walks with my rival beneath my window had been devised in some strange way for a test--a woman's test and touchstone to essay the metal of the sword, a test perhaps intelligible to a woman, though an enigma to me? If only I knew a woman whom I could consult!
My feet lagged more and more, but I reached the bottom of the stairs in the end. The hall was empty. I looked up towards the landing with a wild hope that she would come out and lean over the balustrade, as on the evening when Elmscott first brought me to the house. But there was no stir or movement from garret to cellar. I might have stood in the hall of the Sleeping Palace. From a high window the sunlight slanted athwart the cool gloom in a golden pillar, and a fly buzzed against the pane. I crossed the hall, and let myself out into the noonday. The door clanged behind me with a hollow rattle; it sounded to my hearing like the closing of the gates of a tomb, and I felt it was myself that lay dead behind it.
As I passed beneath the window, something hard dropped upon the crown of my hat, and bounced thence to the ground at my feet. I picked it up. It was a crust of bread. For a space I stood looking at it before I understood. Then I rushed back to the entrance. The door stood open, but the hall was empty and silent as when I left it. I sprang up the stairs, and in my haste missed my footing about halfway up, and rolled down some half-a-dozen steps. The crash of my fall echoed up the well of the staircase, and from behind the parlour door I heard some one laugh. I got on to my legs, and burst into the room.
Ilga was seated before a frame of embroidery very demure and busy. She paid no heed to me, keeping her head bent over her work until I had approached close to the frame. Then she looked up with her eyes sparkling.
"How dare you?" she asked, in a mock accent of injury.
"I don't know," I replied meekly.
She bent once more over her embroidery.
"Humours are the prerogative of my sex," she said.
"I set you apart from it."