"Not try—to see me, even?" she hesitated.
"Not even that, if you forbid."
There was a long pause.
"Perhaps——" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.
She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time light flashed over the room.
I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was disappointed.
As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay.
I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise.