At the same time I stepped into
the light and bowed profoundly.
'You!' she said. 'Here?'
'Yes, I am here,' I replied. 'I have come very far, it may be a
hundred and fifty leagues, to see you. I have waited all this
night in your garden. Will Miss Gilchrist not offer her hand--to a
friend in trouble?'
She extended it between the bars, and I dropped upon one knee on
the wet path and kissed it twice. At the second it was withdrawn
suddenly, methought with more of a start than she had hitherto
displayed. I regained my former attitude, and we were both silent
awhile. My timidity returned on me tenfold. I looked in her face
for any signals of anger, and seeing her eyes to waver and fall
aside from mine, augured that all was well.
'You must have been mad to come here!' she broke out. 'Of all
places under heaven this is no place for you to come. And I was
just thinking you were safe in France!'
'You were thinking of me!' I cried.
'Mr. St. Ives, you cannot understand your danger,' she replied. 'I
am sure of it, and yet I cannot find it in my heart to tell you.
O, be persuaded, and go!'
'I believe I know the worst. But I was never one to set an undue
value on life, the life that we share with beasts. My university
has been in the wars, not a famous place of education, but one
where a man learns to carry his life in his hand as lightly as a
glove, and for his lady or his honour to lay it as lightly down.
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