"What is that, Carlomein?"
"I will not tell you, sir, unless you sleep to-night."
"To be sly becomes thee, precisely because thou art not a fox. I will lie down; but sleep is God's best gift, next to love, and he has deprived me of both."
"If I be sly, sir, you are bitter. But there is not too much sleight, nor bitterness either, where they can be expressed from words. So, sir, come to bed."
"Well spoken, Carlomein; I am coming,—sleep thou!"
But I would not, and I did not leave him until I had seen his head laid low in all the bareness of its beauty, had seen his large eyelids fall, and had drawn his curtains in their softest gloom around the burdened pillow. Then I, too, went back to bed, and I slept delectably and dreamless.
CHAPTER XII.
Very late I slept, and before I had finished dressing, Starwood came for me. Seraphael had been down some time, he told me. I was very sorry, but relieved to discover how much more of his old bright self he wore than on the previous evening.
"Now, Carlomein," he began immediately, "we are going on a pilgrimage directly after breakfast."