'It is so; and I am here in this clear air that my voice may regain its tone. I sing—on the stage.'
She put her hand through his arm again.
'Yes, chained, imprisoned eagle, I am a free singing-bird. What do you say to that?'
What could he say? He was astonished, excited, bewildered. He felt the intoxication which falls on an evangelical preacher when he mounts the platform to preach in a music-hall. He was frightened and pleased; his decorum shaken to its foundation, and cracking on all sides.
'What do you say to that?' she asked, and looked full in his eyes, and her splendid orbs shot light and fire into his heart and sent the flames leaping through his veins. He heaved a long breath.
'Yes,' she said, 'you suffocate behind bars.'
Then she burst into a merry peal of laughter, and Philip involuntarily laughed also, but not heartily.
CHAPTER XLVI.
ARTEMISIA.
'There is the restaurant,' said Miss Durham, 'and being painted within and without, impossible for us to enter. What say you to walking on to the head of the lake? I want to look over the col, and see the mountains of the Rhine valley above Dissentis.'