‘Free to go to the cottage; you must promise to come back. Or I’ll go to the cottage, if you’ll promise to go back to your room and wait till I return.’
She hesitated, looking towards where the cottage was; but I had stirred suspicion and disquietude in her. She dared not face what she might find in the cottage.
‘I’ll go back and wait for you,’ she said. ‘If I went to the cottage and—and all was well, I’m afraid I shouldn’t come back.’
The tone sounded softer. I would have sworn that a smile or a half-smile accompanied the words, but it was too dark to be sure, and when I leant forward to look, Euphrosyne drew back.
‘Then you mustn’t go,’ said I decisively; ‘I can’t afford to lose you.’
‘But if you let me go I could let you go,’ she cried.
‘Could you? Without asking Constantine? Besides, it’s my island you see.’
‘It’s not,’ she cried, with a stamp of her foot. And without more she walked straight by me and disappeared over the ledge of rock. Two minutes later I saw her figure defined against the sky, a black shadow on a deep grey ground; then she disappeared. I set my face straight for the cottage under the summit of the hill. I knew that I had only to go straight and I must come to the little plateau scooped out of the hillside, on which the cottage stood. I found, not a path, but a sort of rough track that led in the desired direction, and along this I made my way very cautiously. At one point it was joined at right angles by another track, from the side of the hill where the main road across the island lay. This, of course, afforded an approach to the cottage without passing by my house. In twenty minutes the cottage loomed, a blurred mass, before me. I fell on my knees and peered at it.