A gliding swish behind him made him turn. She stood in the frame of the door, looking at him. She was wrapped in a loose gown, mauve-tinted, that stopped in a square before reaching the neck. Her hair fell in two braids behind her, leaving a haze of gold shimmering before the eyes; and her eyes shone through, calm, wondering, and blue. A vestige of pure, white sleep still hung about her cloyingly, and she was adorable.
"You are going?" she asked—and the words floated slowly, as if held back by some indefinable regret.
"Yes," he said; "I must go back."
She stood looking slightly past him at something very far, into an infinity that was desolate; her eyes widened, purpled.
"I shall be lonely," she said, impersonally, as if reading into that distance.
He started a little. After a while he said, hesitatingly: "The troop are here now; the lieutenant——"
But she stood there, very still, staring at the future, stretching long ahead as the past mirrored, the lone, inexorable future reflecting the lone, hard past. She moved forward a step, and that step was very weary.
"I shall be lonely," she repeated.
A tremulous wonder came into his eyes.
But suddenly she had crumpled upon the long wicker chair, her face hidden in her arms, and her shoulders began to rise and fall softly.