His voice was strained and impetuous. For eight months he had waited; he had been kept waiting an extra day—the longest of them all.
“Hush!” she whispered. “Peter—— I’ve told him nothing. You shouldn’t have come, Harry; you really shouldn’t.”
She took a hand of each as they helped her to land. Walking back to the villa, she gave them laughing glimpses of her adventure, “So it’s not such a bad day’s work; he’s going to make me live forever in a portrait.”
Good-nights had been said. From her window Kay had seen the lights blown out in other bedrooms. The fishing-village, fringing the shore, had been in darkness for two hours. She leant out, gazing across the bay to where the headland of Lerici curved in like a horn. Life—that was what she thought about. It was in this very room that Shelley had wakened and recognized the cowled figure of his soul, and had heard it question, “Art thou satisfied?” It was the same question that she asked herself.
A knock upon the door! She started from the window and looked back. It came again, so lightly that it seemed to say, “Only you and I are meant to hear me.”
She threw a wrapper about her; her long bright hair fell shining across her shoulders. It might be Peter. Again it came.
On the threshold Harry was standing.
“Let me speak to you.”
She hesitated.
“You gave me no chance to say anything. Am I to stay or—or to go to-morrow?”