The bulldog, aroused from a nap, thrust a warm muzzle between his knees. “It’s uncanny, Chum!” he said, as his hand caressed the velvety head. “Why should the touch of that fool thing chill my spine and make my flesh tiptoe over my bones? Is it a mere peculiarity of temperament? Some men hate cats’-eyes. Some can’t abide sitting on plush. I knew a chap once who couldn’t see milk poured from a pitcher without getting goose-flesh. People are born that way, but there must be a cause. Why should I hate a pistol? Do you suppose I was shot in one of my previous existences?”
For a long while he sat there, his pipe dead, his eyes on the moonlighted out-of-doors. The eery feeling that had gripped him had gone as quickly as it had come. At last he rose, stretching himself with a great boyish yawn, put out all save one of the candles and taking a bath-robe, sandals and a huge fuzzy towel from the steamer-trunk, stripped leisurely. He donned the bath-robe and sandals and went out through the window to the garden and down to where lay the little lake ruffling silverly under the moon. On its brink he stopped, and tossing back his head, tried to imitate one of the bird-calls but was unsuccessful. With a rueful laugh he threw off the bath-robe and stood an instant glistening, poised in the moonlight like a marble faun, before he dove, straight down out of sight.
Five minutes later he pulled himself up over the edge, his flesh tingling with the chill of the water, and drew the robe about his cool white shoulders. Then he thrust his feet into his sandals and sped quickly back. He rubbed himself to a glow, and blowing out the remaining candle, stretched himself luxuriously between the warm blankets on the couch. The dog sniffed inquiringly at his hand, then leaped up and snuggled down close to his feet.
The soft flooding moonlight sent its radiance into the gloomy room, touching lovingly its dark carven furniture and bringing into sharp relief the lithe contour of the figure under the fleecy coverlid, the crisp damp hair, the expressive face, and the wide-open dreamy eyes.
John Valiant’s thoughts had fled a thousand miles away, to the tall girl who all his life had seemed to stand out from his world, aloof and unsurpassed—Katharine Fargo. He tried to picture her, a perfect chatelaine, graceful and gracious as a tall, white, splendid lily, in this dead house that seemed still to throb with living passions. But the picture subtly eluded him and he stirred uneasily under the blanket.
After a time his hand stretched out to the reading-stand and drew the glass with its vivid blossom nearer, till, in his nostrils, its musky odor mingled with the dew-wet scent of the honeysuckle from the garden. At last his eyes closed. “Every man carries his fate ... on a riband about his neck,” he muttered drowsily, and then, “Roses ... red roses....”
And so he fell asleep.