"As you please.... Thank you."
He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.
Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. In the third night, toward one o'clock, she tossed away her book, put out her light, and opened all her shutters as usual, to air the rooms. "If I opened his door and window, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. "It's terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gallatin had occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the sill—it was the small window beyond the end of the balcony, and so did not extend to the floor. The sky was clear; the moon was hidden by the house. Stillness—peace—beauty—beauty of view and of odor—the lake with its dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and shimmering with moonlight—perfumes of foliage and flowers and of the fresh-cut grass in the meadows beyond the highroad.
"It's as if everybody in the world were dead except me," she murmured. She listened again to get the weird effect of utter absence of sound. This time she heard the faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company in its blindness and solitude. Then—her nerves became tense. From the balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, came a stealthy sound—like a step. Softly she crossed the room—the hall—her own room, to the high-boy. She took from its top drawer her pistol. She returned to Gallatin's bedroom—noiselessly unlocked the shutters over one pair of the long windows opening on the balcony—unbolted one of them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that balcony. Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, it was their turn. The pistol was self-cocking. Taking it in her right hand, she drew back the window with her left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very face of the man.
He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in one hand—nothing, apparently, in the other. At the same instant she heard him cry "Courtney!"
The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the balcony floor.
"It's I!" Gallatin exclaimed. "I heard a second-story window go up very softly—I was walking and smoking in the path. I came—climbed a pillar—and——"
"O God! God!" she sobbed. Down she sank to the floor, her face buried in her hands. "My love! My love! And I almost killed you!"
He knelt beside her. "Dearest—" He put his arm round her. Instantly he drew away and sprang to his feet. Up she started, gazing wildly round. "What is it?" she exclaimed. "Where?"
"Nothing—nothing," was his confused answer. But already she had felt a thrill from where his arm, his hand had been, and understood.