The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold;
the shore at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time was
come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and without
lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a
wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light
breeze was rising.
He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunset
was the time they had named for the exchange. What did it mean? In five
minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on
the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot and old
Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before sunset!
Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and--what
was that?
He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a
groan from him. At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman
lay prone on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms. She
lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole,
her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count Hannibal
stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again. It
was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it was his wife!
He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose
slowly to his cheek. And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to foot,
from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the shod
feet; unchecked he took his fill of that which he had so much desired--the
seeing her! A woman prone, with all of her hidden but her hands: a
hundred acquainted with her would not have known her. But he knew her,
and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a thousand, by her
hands alone.
What was she doing here, and in this guise? He pondered; then he looked
from her for an instant, and saw that while he had gazed at her the sun
had set, the light had passed from the top of the hill; the world without
and the room within were growing cold. Was that the cause she no longer
lay quiet? He saw a shudder run through her, and a second; then it
seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned, and prayed in half-
heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her forehead on her arms,
and then was still again, as still as death. By the time the paroxysm
had passed, the last flush of sunset had faded from the sky, and the
hills were growing dark.