I lay back on my pillow and closed my eyes. What was this girl to me that I should care one way or the other?
Nick took my platter and went away, leaving me to sleep as I seemed to desire it.
But I had no desire to sleep. And as I lay there, I became sensible that my entire and battered body was almost imperceptibly a-tremble.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DEMON
I think that summer was the strangest ever I have lived,—the most unreal days of life,—so still, so golden, so strangely calm the solitude that ringed me where I was slowly healing of my hurt.
Each dawn was heralded by gold fire, each evening by a rosy conflagration in the west. It rained only at night; and all that crystal clear mid-summer scarcely a shred of fleece dappled the empyrean.
Those winds which blow so frequently in our Northland seemed to have become zephyrs, too; and there was but a reedy breeze along the Vlaie Water, and scarce a ripple to rock the lily pads in shallow reach and cove.
It was strange. And, only for the loveliness of night and day, there might have seemed in this hushed tranquillity around me a sort of hidden menace.