As they went, the mourners still stood before their dead, the husband and wife hand in hand. The brother, with his hands clasped before him, gazed steadfastly into his sister’s face, that was scarcely whiter than his own.
The little lamp had been lighted, the chains attached to the chain of a bell hung outside the door, and a plate of glass covered the niche.
People came and went quietly. Some had gone home; others were seated on the stone benches outside. Dylar was leaning on the parapet; and when Tacita and Elena came out, he accompanied them down and through the ravine. When they reached the lane behind the church, he asked Tacita if she would like to go up and see his cottage, which was just above the college. She assented gladly, and Elena left them to go up the path together.
The cottage was of the plainest, and contained but two rooms. The front one had a glass door and two windows overlooking the town. There was a table in the centre of the room with a revolving top surrounded by drawers. A hammock hung at the back, and there were two chairs, a bookcase and a closet. The floor was of green and white tiles, and the roughly plastered walls were washed a dull green.
“You see, I have here everything that I need,” Dylar said. “My living rooms are in the college; but I often come here. My writing and planning, especially of our outside affairs, is done here. The business of San Salvador is all portioned out and arranged, and can be done without me. But the outside business requires a good deal of study.”
He brought the chairs out, and they sat down, and Dylar pointed out the larger mountains, and named them, told where the torrents were and how they had been or could be deviated, told where the signal-stations were, and how they could know from them all that happened at their outer stations. He showed her her own chamber windows in the Arcade, the heights behind which, scarcely hidden from the town, she had entered San Salvador, and, near the southeastern angle of the opening, a mountain with a double peak, beyond which stood Castle Dylar.
The terrace where they sat was covered with a thin dry turf, and a pine-tree grew at one side and an olive-tree at the other. The olive was so old that its trunk was quite hollowed out, and the side next the rock had long since died and been cut away. The single great outward branch was full of blossoms. From the parapet one could look down and see the river of ripening wheat that flowed quite round the rock on which the college was built.
“This is the only spot in the world that I can properly call home,” Dylar said. “It is the only place all mine, and where no stranger comes. If I am wanted, a signal calls me.”
“You like to be here!” Tacita said with a certain pensiveness. “You like to be alone!”
“You think so,” he said, “because I keep somewhat apart. It is necessary that I should do so in order to avoid complicating intimacies. Then, I have a great deal to think of. Besides, I will confess that when human affection comes too near, and becomes personal, I feel a sense of recoil. Human evil and sorrow I do not shrink from; but human love”—