“To love her a little—­yet not to love her too much.”

That was the difficult task she had set me.  How to perform I knew not.

At the top of the steps I met Henry.

“Do you think that we need go on to-morrow morning?” he said.  “Do you not think we are in a very good quarter of the world, and that we might do worse than stop a while?”

“If you wish it, I have no objections,” I said, with due caution.

“Thank you!” he said, and ran off to give some further directions about his guns.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW DAY

It need not be wondered at that during the night I slept little.  It seemed such a strange thing which had happened to me.  That a great lady should lean upon my arm—­a lady of whom before that day I had never heard—­seemed impossible to my slow-moving Scots intelligence.

I sat most of the night by my window, from which I looked down the valley.  The moonlight was filling it.  The stars tingled keen and frosty above.  Lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the chasm.  On the horizon there was a flush of rose, in the midst of which hung a snowy peak like a wave arrested when it curves to break, and on the upmost surge of white winked a star.

I opened the casement and flung it back.  The cool, icy air of night took hold on me.  I listened.  There came from below the far sound of falling waters.  Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly.  A dull, muffled sound, vast and mysterious, rose slumberously.  I remembered that I was near to the great Alps.  Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche.

But more than all these things,—­under this roof, closed within the white curtains, was the woman who with her well-deep, serene eyes had looked into my life.

“To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!” I said to myself, seeing the possibilities waver and thicken before me.  So I went to my bed, leaving the window open, and after a time slept.

But very early I was astir.  The lake lay asleep.  The shadows in its depths dreamed on untroubled.  There was not the lapse of a wavelet on the shore.  The stars diminished to pin-points, and wistfully withdrew themselves into the coming mystery of blue.  Behind the eastern mountains the sun rose—­not yet on us who were in the valley, but flooding the world overhead with intense light.  On the second floor a casement opened and a blind was drawn aside.  There was nothing more—­a serving-maid, belike.  But my heart beat tumultuously.

Nova dies indeed, but I fear me not nova quies.  But when ever to a man was love a synonym for quietness?  Quietness is rest.  Rest is embryonic sleep.  Sleep is death’s brother.  But, contrariwise, love to a man is life—­new life.  Life is energy—­the opening of new possibilities, the breaking of ancient habitudes.  Sulky self-satisfactions are hunted from their lair.  Sloth is banished, selfishness done violence to with swiftest poniard-stroke.