“No, and on second thoughts, I don’t care to hear it now. Another time. Good night!”
“Ah! the gentleman is too good! Thousand thanks! Gute Nacht, gnädiger Herr!”
Gethryn remained looking at the crags.
“They cannot be half a mile from here,” he thought. “I suppose the path is good enough; if not, I can turn back. The lake will look well from there by moonlight.” And he found himself moving up a little footpath which branched below the hotel.
It was pleasant, brisk walking. The air had a touch of early frost in it. Gethryn swung along at a good pace, pulling his cap down and fastening the last button of his coat. The trees threw long shadows across the path, hiding it from view, except where the moonlight fell white on the moist gravel. The moon herself was past the full and not very bright; a film of mist was drawing over the sky. Gethryn, looking up, thought of that gentle moon which once sailed ghostlike at high noon through the blue zenith among silver clouds while a boy lay beside the stream with rod and creel; and then he remembered the dear old yellow moon that used to flood the nursery with pools of light and pile strange moving shades about his bed. And then he saw, still looking up, the great white globe that hung above the frozen river, striking blue sparks from the ringing skates.
He felt lonely and a trifle homesick. For the first time in his life—he was still so young—he thought of his childhood and his boyhood as something gone beyond recall.
He had nearly reached his destination; just before him the path entered a patch of pine woods and emerged from it, shortly, upon the flat-topped rock which he was seeking. Under the first arching branches he stopped and looked back at the marred moon in the mist-covered sky.
“I am sick of this wandering,” he thought. “Wane quickly! Your successor shall shine on my home: Yvonne’s and mine.”
And, thinking of Yvonne, he passed into the shadows which the pines cast upon the Schicksalfels.