Bertie nodded, and dropped back into his chair.
“I—I consent,” he said, in a low voice. “Of course I consent. But is there nothing I can do——”
“Nothing,” was the calm and instant response. “My case is beyond the help of man. Neither you nor any one else can help me, Bertie. I have got to ‘dree my weird,’ as the Scotch say, and—alone!” He looked round the room slowly, then went on: “You asked me why I chose this place. It was an accident. Knowing that the people who were hunting me”—Bertie winced—“would jump to the conclusion that I had gone on the Continent, I determined to remain in England. In the course of my wanderings I happened to come upon this place. Its utter seclusion struck me; its beauty—it’s pretty, isn’t it?”—Bertie nodded—“its beauty completed the conquest. You remember, I was always inclined to the artistic in the old days when I was not an outcast and a fugitive,” and he smiled.
Bertie sighed.
“You don’t know how it pains me to hear you talk like this, Faradeane!” he said, in a low voice.
“And it costs me a great deal to talk like it, though I try to hide it,” said the other, gravely. “I don’t think there is much more to tell you. It isn’t much, is it, that I have told you?”
Bertie shook his head.
“And—and you mean to remain here? What will you do with yourself? Do you intend to live in complete seclusion—to make no friends?”
Faradeane was silent for a moment.
“I shall remain here until chance puts my pursuers on my track,” he replied. “What am I going to do?” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s rather a difficult question to answer, Cherub. I find time hangs rather heavily on my hands; but I read a great deal, and I write. You know I always had a knack of scribbling. And I have indulged myself in a horse; he and I—it is a new one—are very good friends already. As to friends of the human kind, barring yourself, Cherub, I must do without them. If you like to take pity on the recluse, and run in now and again, well and good; but no one else.”