There was a tremor in the mezzo as it replied: “N-no. I’m just—I’m just moving about.”
“Well, for Heaven’s sake go to bed! It’s after two o’clock. I never was in a house like this in all my life before. It seems to be full of people crawling round everywhere. I think I’ll come down to your mother’s bed, after all.”
“Do,” was the only word I heard as I stole into the servants’ dining-room, then into the closet with shelves, where I shut the door softly. A few seconds later I was out on the cool ground, in the dark, behind the shrub.
I lay there almost breathlessly, not because I was unable to get up, but because I couldn’t drag myself away. I wanted to go over the happenings of the last hour and seal them in my memory. They were both terrible to me and beautiful.
I had been there some fifteen minutes when I heard the open window above me closed gently and the fastening snapped. I knew that again she was near me, though, as before, she didn’t suspect my presence. I wondered if the chances of life would ever bring us so close to each other again.
Above me, where the shrub detached itself a little from the wall of the house, I could see the stars. Lying on my back, with my head pillowed on the crook of my arm, I watched them till it seemed to me they began to pale. At the same time I caught a thinning in the texture of the darkness. I got up with the silence in which I had lain down. Crossing the brick-paved yard and striding over the low wall, I was again in the vacant lot.
It was not yet dawn, but it was the dark-gray hour which tells that dawn is coming. I was obliged to take more accurate precautions than before, as, crushing the tangle of nettle, burdock, fireweed, and blue succory, I crept along in the shadow of the house wall to regain the empty street.