The world had grown silent; across the ravine a deer among the trees watched him, motionless.
Suddenly the deer leaped in an ecstasy of terror and went crashing away into obscurity. But Malcourt lay very, very still.
His hat was off; the cliff breeze played with his dark curly hair, lifting it at the temples, stirring the one obstinate strand that never lay quite flat on the crown of his head.
A moment later the sun set.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HAMIL IS SILENT
Late in the autumn his aunt wrote Hamil from Sapphire Springs:
"There seems to be a favourable change in Shiela. Her aversion to people is certainly modified. Yesterday on my way to the hot springs I met her with her trained nurse, Miss Lester, face to face, and of course meant to pass on as usual, apparently without seeing her; but to my surprise she turned and spoke my name very quietly; and I said, as though we had parted the day before—'I hope you are better'; and she said, 'I think I am'—very slowly and precisely like a person who strives to speak correctly in a foreign tongue. Garry, dear, it was too pathetic; she is so changed—beautiful, even more beautiful than before; but the last childish softness has fled from the delicate and almost undecided features you remember, and her face has settled into a nobler mould. Do you recollect in the Munich Museum an antique marble, by some unknown Greek sculptor, called 'Head of a Young Amazon'? You must recall it because you have spoken to me of its noble and almost immortal loveliness. Dear, it resembles Shiela as she is now—with that mysterious and almost imperceptible hint of sorrow in the tenderly youthful dignity of the features.
"We exchanged only the words I have written you; she passed her way leaning on Miss Lester's arm; I went for a mud bath as a precaution to our inherited enemy. If rheumatism gets me at last it will not be the fault of your aged and timorous aunt.