“I wish to be by myself,” I said.
He took his pipe from his lips.
“You know the way. If you object to mine, there is the ladder in your room—and the skylight—and all the forest to choose from”—and he began to smoke again.
I left him, without another word, and, ascending to my closet, dropped the trap with a slam. It was an outrage beyond endurance. I threw myself upon my bed, and wept tears of rage. What a fool I had been, what a fool, to commit my destinies to a savage! I had thought romance had come to find me, walking on two feet in the starlight, and all the time it had been leaving me, stumping sorrowfully away on its poor wooden legs. My soul gushed out in fresh mourning for the dear monster I had wronged.
More than once I rose, in the full determination to fly and rejoin him. As often, the hopelessness of my position cast me down again. I had no idea where I was; I dared not face the prospect of wandering, lost and alone, in those savage solitudes. The wretch had played his part well—and for what? Why for me.
The thought, at last, quieted my grief—brought me to a little reason. After all, I had been cold with him, something less than grateful. What had brought him to repudiate the customs of his caste? I fell into a fit of speculation. Perhaps it was in scorn of an order that had basely disinherited him. His words had seemed to imply so. Perhaps he had meant no more than to read me a lesson in feeling.
I sighed. I was wilful and imperious, I knew, I said to myself. I had been spoilt a little, perhaps, by admiration, and my better qualities obscured. It was a wonder he could have seen anything to covet in me. Was it my part to convince him of his mistake?
I sighed again, and then rose and walked about. Every detail of the tiny chamber was witness to the loving expectations he had formed of me. What was I to do? How climb down and keep my place in my own eyes?
He meant to leave me to resolve the question for myself, it appeared. All day I waited and hungered, and not a sound of his footstep approaching did I hear. At length, when it was dark, quite desperate I took my candle, and, softly opening the trap, listened a moment, and descended. The cellar was empty; only the board and stools, and nothing else. I went swiftly scanning it, holding the light overhead. I tried the door at the end; it was fast locked. Unless he had gone out that way, there was no accounting for his disappearance.
All at once I heard the thin mutter of voices—his and another’s, I was sure. Seeking to localise them, I came upon the low hole in the wall through which he had dragged the breakfast tray. I stooped, and hearing, I thought, the whisper clearer, sunk to my knees and looked through. Here was a passage, I found to my surprise, wide enough for a man to creep by; and, beyond, it seemed, a faintly lighted room. As I bent, I heard the chairs of the talkers drag, as if the two were rising, and, fearful of discovery, fled on tiptoe to my room once more, and, noiselessly closing the trap, stood panting and rigid by it. To what dark mystery was I being made the innocent and unconscious accessory? I felt suddenly bewildered and terrified. The light in my hand swayed and leaped, evoking gusty phantoms on the wall. A wind seemed to boom in my brain. I was really light-headed with hunger, I think. Presently, from sheer giddiness, I threw myself on my bed once more, and fell into a sort of waking stupor.