As she still clung to him, he tried to whisper some last words of a consoling or reassuring nature, and she suddenly relaxed her grasp, and allowed him to make his escape without further dissuasion—not that his arguments had reconciled her to his departure, but because she was mercifully unaware of it.
THE ODD TRICK
XV.
"O heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught
By that you swore to withstand?"
Maud.
Outside on the stairs Leander suddenly remembered that his purpose might be as far as ever from being accomplished. The house was being watched: to be seen leaving it would procure his instant arrest.
Hastily excusing himself to the goddess, he rushed down to his laboratory, where he knew there was a magnificent beard and moustache which he had been constructing for some amateur theatricals. With these, and a soft felt hat, he completed a disguise in which he flattered himself he was unrecognisable.
The goddess, however, penetrated it as soon as he rejoined her. "Why have you thus transformed yourself?" she inquired coldly.