She fetched a chair, placed it in front of the fire, pointed to it with the same ravishingly childlike smile, indicating that it was for me, and then, when she saw me mechanically sit down, picked up her chair and came and sat close beside me.
In a second she was lost in a reverie as profound as that from which I had aroused her; and the only sound I heard was the rain on the window and the fitful gusts of wind playing around the cottage.
The wind having blown open the door, I got up to shut it. Winifred rose too, and again taking hold of my hand, she looked up into my face with a smile, and said, 'Don't go; I'm so lonely—poor Winnie's so lonely.'
As I held her hand in mine, and closed my other hand over it, I murmured to myself, 'If God will only give her to me like this—mad like this—I will be content.'
'Dearest,' I said, longing to put my arm round her waist—to kiss her own passionless lips—but I dared not, lest I might frighten her away, 'I will not leave you. I will never leave you. You shall never be lonely any more.'
I closed the door, and we resumed our seats.
Can I put into words what passed within my soul as we two sat by the fire, she holding my hand in her own—holding it as innocently as a child holds the hand of its mother? Can I put into words my mingled feelings of love and pity and wild grief, as I sat looking at her and murmuring, 'Yes; if God will only give her to me like this, I will be content'?
'Prince,' said she, 'your eyes look very kind!—Sweet, sweet eyes,' she continued, looking at me. 'The Prince of the Mist has love-eyes,' she repeated, as she placed the seats before the fire again.
Then I heard her murmur, 'Love-eyes! love-eyes! Henry's love-eyes!' Then a terrible change came over her. She sprang up and came and peered in my face. An indescribable expression of terror overspread her features, her nostrils expanded, her lips were drawn tightly over her teeth, her eyes seemed starting from their sockets; her throat suddenly became fluted like the throat of an aged woman, then veined with knotted, cruel cords. Then she stood as transfixed, and her face was mimicking that appalling look on her father's face which I had seen in the moonlight. With a yell of 'Father!' she leapt from me. Then she rushed from the house, and I could hear her run by the window, crying, 'Cursed, cursed, cursed by Henry's father!'
For an instant the movement took away my breath; but I soon recovered and sprang after her to the door.