But suddenly she heard the salon door open and an entering footstep that caused her heart to leap within her. With an incontrollable impulse she moved and showed herself at the window.
“How delightful to find you!” exclaimed Raine. “I came almost on a forlorn hope.”
“I stayed to sentimentalize a little in the moonlight,” said Katherine. “I thought you had gone to the café.”
“No; I have been sitting with my father,” he said, pulling a chair on to the balcony and motioning her to it. “And then, when I left him, I thought it would be pleasant to talk to you—so I came. I have not had a word with you all day.”
“I have missed our argument too,” admitted Katherine. “So you had a pleasant expedition?”
“Very,” said Raine. “But I wished you had been there.”
“You had your father and Felicia.”
“That was the worst of it,” he said laughingly. “They are so much in love with one another, that I was the third that makes company nought.”
He talked about the drive to Vevey, the habits and customs of the Swiss, digressed into comparisons between the peasant classes of various countries. Katherine, who had wandered over most of the beaten track in Europe, supplied his arguments with illustrations. She loved to hear him talk. His knowledge was wide and accurate, his criticisms vigorous. The strength of his intellectual fibre alone differentiated him, in her eyes, from ordinary men. His vision was so clear, his touch upon all subjects so firm, and yet, at need, so delicate; she felt herself so infinitely little of mind compared with him. They talked on till past midnight; but long ere that the conversation had drifted around things intimately subjective.
As they parted for the night at the end of Katherine's corridor, she could not help saying to him somewhat humbly,—