“May I come?”
She spoke upon the true feminine impulse which cannot bear to see the avoidable disappointment inflicted; a feeling which men, and wisely, cultivate not at all in their commerce with each other.
David, again back in spirit with the heavens, turned upon her much the same look he had given her upon his first entrance. Then, as he stood a second, to all outward appearance impassive and detached, a curious feeling as of the realisation of some beautiful dream took possession of his senses. The fragrant breath of the distilled and sublimated herbs, “yielding up their little souls, good little souls!” in aromatic dissolution, filled his nostrils as with an extraordinary meaning. The sound of his kinswoman’s voice, the touch of her hand, the subtle, out-of-door freshness of her presence in this warm room—all these things struck chords that had long been silent in his being. And the glance of her eyes! It was as blue as his star!
He took her fingers with a certain grace of gesture, born it might be of the forgotten minuets of his adolescent days, and prepared to lead her forth. But at the door he paused.
“As your father says, it is cold upon my tower.”
So speaking, he placed upon her shoulders his own cloak of furs. And, as he drew the folds together under her chin, their eyes met again. She looked very young and very fair. For the first time that evening he smiled.
“Big brother and little sister!” he said.
Now, for some reason which at the moment Ellinor would stoutly have refused to define even to herself, the words were in no way such as it pleased her to hear from his lips. But the smile that lit up the darkness and austerity of his countenance like a ray of light, and altered its whole character into something indescribably gentle, went straight to her heart and lingered there as a memory sweet and rare.
Master Simon watched the door close upon them with an expression at once humourous and philosophically disapproving. Belphegor, sharpening his claws on the hearthrug, glanced up at his master with a soundless mew, as after all these distractions and disturbances the well-known quiet muttering fell again upon the air.
“I took her for the rara avis,” said the old man to himself, “but, I fear me, what I thought at first was the black swan may prove but a little grey goose after all! handmaid to that poor loony, with his circles and degrees as to assist me—me! And after displaying such an intelligent interest, too ...! Alas, my cat, ’tis but a woman!”