"Yes, I am very happy, Uncle Felix. Only—it is so different a happiness from what I used to know. It seems a deeper, a more meaning thing than I have ever felt before. That is why I want to be alone. You understand, don't you?"
The old gentleman pressed her hand.
"Will you come down again?" he asked, after a moment's pause. "Sargent is coming out here to-night. I should like for him to see you."
Natalia's eyes deepened and she came closer to him.
"I am glad, so—so glad, he is coming," she said thoughtfully. "Yes—I shall come down again. Tell him I shall be waiting for him in the garden—the garden of shadows—he will know."
She went slowly up the steps to her room. It was empty; even Dicey had been attracted to the kitchen by reports of the wonderful supper that was being prepared.
She stood looking about her for a long time. It was to be her last night among the old surroundings she had loved so well. The old bed, with its huge posts and carvings of fruit and flowers, seemed to respond to her caressing glance; the marble mantel spoke to her of the many winter evenings spent before its hospitable face; the wall paper and the carpet, each repeating a design of baskets of roses, held stories of the long ago; everything was overflowing with what had gone before—holding their story of her mother's life, and now, her own.
She picked up a cashmere shawl she had found in an old cedar chest in the attic and pulled it across her shoulders. That, too, was of that elder day, and as she felt its folds about her, it seemed a link that brought her in even closer contact with the past.
After a little while she went down the stairs again, avoiding the door to the dining room, and slipping into the parlour unnoticed. Her mother's portrait gazed down upon her, calm and peaceful, in the candle light. Was it their last parting, she mused as she stood before it; would they never look into each other's eyes again! She turned away with dimmed eyes, and went noiselessly out into the night.
It was an evening in which the vibrant sounds of Nature became only a distant throbbing, vague and indistinct. It was very still for moments, almost breathless save for the occasional breeze with its burden of rustling leaves.