After all, it was better so. His presence would have agitated her. Besides, he was obeying the rules of the place.
But the light to read her letter by! For the first time in her life, it seemed, she had no light at hand, and this of all times in her life when most it was needed. Neither was there a match in her chamber, nor match nor candle in the ante-room, nor in the dining-room. “Fool that I was!” she cried desperately, and ran to the balcony again. The porter would be sure to have a taper with him.
She spoke; but there was no reply. The man had gone away.
There was no reply from him; but was this a reply, this little lambent shining at her hand? The glow-worm she had seen was on the rail. As it lightened, a spot of light like sunshine lit the stone.
Tacita in breathless haste brought a large sheet of card-board and set it in the blessed little creature’s path; and when she had enticed it, carried the sheet to her table, cut the silken thread that bound her letter, and slipped the page along toward the spot of light that, ceasing for a while, began again.
Turning the paper cautiously, her heart palpitating, her lips parted with quick breaths, she read her letter, word by word, till the whole message was deciphered.
“I cannot sleep nor rest for thinking of you,” he wrote. “I have to put a strong force on myself not to go and speak from under your window. I am drawn by chains. I have a thousand words of love to say to you. How can I wait a week to say them! I have been whispering them across the dark to you. How you came to me to-day, my own! I know just how many steps you took, and I shall set a white stone in place of the gray one where you stopped.
Dylar.”
She found pencil and paper, and aided by the same fitful lamp wrote her answer.
“My Love, like you I could not sleep nor rest. You have made me happy. I have only a glow-worm to read and write by. Sleep now, and love your