"Everything in nature, if you leave it alone, will come back--to the ways of its early life."
"If you leave it alone?" Westenra spoke almost involuntarily. She laughed.
"Am not I going to be left alone?"
There was a silence. Every one sat staring at her.
"Who but I would care for such a foolish life!" she said more sombrely.
"But wouldn't I?" burst out Rupert. "It is what I have always longed for. To coucher à la belle étoile! Zut, alors! I will come too. It is understood."
Val laughed.
"You would soon be bored. One must be a wanderfoot by birth and instinct."
But he repudiated the saying, and there was no boredom in his eye nor in the eyes of any. An odd uneasiness possessed them all. Haidee looked paler and was biting her lip. Bran had descended from his father's shoulders and advancing on Val stood looking at her, a startling reflection of her fierce wistfulness in his own eyes. But he still kept a hand on his father's knee.
It was Marietta who broke up the séance by coming out to announce in an autocratic manner that dinner would be ready in ten minutes. No one had realised that it was so late. Westenra did not accept the invitation to stay and dine as he was, but having secured its extension to the evening sprang on his bicycle and rode for his hotel to the endangerment of several lives on the route Nationale.