"Oh, no maid!" said Nancy. Then she looked up. "With you," she said, because the Girl in the Letters would have said it, and also because she wanted him to come.
"All right. Don't take much luggage," he said.
XVI
They went. They went through Switzerland. They drove down the wide white roads that coil like wind-blown ribbons round the swelling breasts of the Alps; they went up the barren Julier Pass, and through the shuddering Via Mala, breakfasting at St. Moritz, table d'hôting at Maloya, wandering through the moonlike sunshine of Splügen's pine-forests, clattering and rumbling over the covered bridges of Sufers. The snow-tipped pine-trees, like regiments of monks with nightcaps on, nodded at them in stately gravity; the squirrels stopped with quick, beady glances, and scuttled away, tail-flourishing, up the branches, while the bland Helvetian cows stood in the green meadows to watch them pass.
Every evening they went together down boot-adorned passages to the door of Nancy's room. And there he said, "Good-night, Miss Brown," and left her.
They went on into Italy—straight down to Naples without stopping in Milan, for Nancy would not see anyone she loved after all; for she could not explain anything, and did not know what to say, and did not want to think of anything just now. She would think afterwards. They clambered up the Vesuvius; they wandered through Pompei; they went to Spezia, and remembered Shelley; they went on to Porto Venere, and trembled to think that the sharks might have eaten Byron when he swam across the bay; they rowed about the Golfo, and ate vongole and other horrible, ill-smelling frutti di mare. And every evening, in the boot-adorned passages of the hotels, he took her to the door of her room, and said, "Good-night, Miss Brown."
In Spezia a little steamer that was coasting northwards took them on board. They were sliding on blue waters into Genoa, when Nancy, seated on a basket of oranges, felt the touch of the Ogre's hand on her shoulder. She looked up and smiled. He sat down on another basket beside her. It creaked and groaned under his weight, so he got up and fetched a heavy wooden case, dragging it along the deck to Nancy's side.
"Now what?" he said.
Nancy had grown to understand him well. Not for an instant did she think that he was talking of the moment, or the next hour, as she had thought when they had driven in the Bois, now more than a month ago. She knew that he looked at life in large outlines, and seldom spoke of small, immediate things.
"Now what?" she echoed. He put his large brown hand on her small one, and it was his first caress. It thrilled Nancy to the heart. His chilly blue eyes watched her face, and saw it paling slowly under his gaze.