A pause fell, more hushed than common silence; they stood side by side looking out on to the wood, now sad and dark, which had surrounded all their united lives.
Mary was in that mood which takes refuge from the real facts in symbol. She did not look back on her life, but on the history of the wood since she had known it; radiant in summer, complaining in the wind, silent in the rain, bare and bright and wonderful amid the snow, flushed with loveliness in the spring. She thought that this pageant had ended for her, that though the wood might bloom and change she would never see it again after these leaves fell; she had been haunted, though not troubled, all her life by the presentiment of an early death, and now this feeling, which she had never imparted to any, became one with the feeling that the wood was passing, ending for her, and that all the thousand little joys and fears associated with the trees, the flowers, the sunshine, and the snow, were fading and perishing to a mere memory.
Her fingers tightened on the Prince's hand.
"'Tis such a beautiful night," she said in a strange voice; "it maketh me feel I must die."
He, who all his life had lived on the verge of death, smiled to hear these words uttered by blooming youth.
"You," he said calmly, "have no need to think of that for many a year. Death and you! Come, you have stared too long into the dark."
Reluctantly she let his hand free, and latched the window with something of a shiver, but smiled too at the same time, in a breathless way.
"What will you do now?" she asked.
The Prince went to the table and snuffed the candles with the shining brass snuffers, and the flames rose up still and pointed.
"I have sent for M. Dyckfelt and M. Fagel," he answered, and seated himself on one of the stiff walnut chairs. His face was bloodless under the tan of his outdoor life. The excitement that had shown when Mr. Herbert left had utterly gone; he was composed, even sombre and melancholy, and his thoughts were not to be guessed by his countenance.