Vesper stood in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back. She could only see his curly head, a bit of his cheek, and the tip of his mustache. At the sound of her light step he turned around, and his face brightened.
"Look at the sunset," he said, kindly, when she stood in embarrassment before him. "It is remarkable."
It was indeed remarkable. A blood-red sun was shouldering his way in and out of a wide dull mass of gray cloud that was unrelieved by a single fleck of color.
Rose looked at the sky, and Vesper looked at her, and thought of a grieving Madonna. She had been so gay and cheerful lately. What had happened to call that expression of divine tenderness and sympathy to her face? He had never seen her so ethereal and so spiritually beautiful, not even when she was bending over his sick-bed. What a rest and a pleasure to weary eyes she was, in her black artistic garments, and how pure was the oval of her face, how becoming the touch of brownness on the fair skin. The silk handkerchief knotted under her chin and pulled hood-wise over the shock of flaxen hair combed up from the forehead, which two or three little curls caressed daintily, gave the finishing touch of quaintness and out-of-the-worldness to her appearance.
"You are feeling slightly blue this evening, are you not?" he asked.
"Blue,—that means one's thoughts are black?" said Rose, bringing her glance back to him.
"Yes."
"Then I am a very little blue," she said, frankly. "This inn is like the world to me. When those about me are sad, I, too, am sad. Sometimes I grieve when strangers go,—for days in advance I have a weight at heart. When they leave, I shut myself in my room. For others I do not care."
"And are you melancholy this evening because you are thinking that my mother and I must soon leave?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "No; I did not think of that, but I do now."