“It sounds repellent.”

“It was—­fierce and grim and repellent, and it suited my mood—­so I stopped at the Inn, my old maid Simone and I, and I got permission to go and see it.  The landlord of the Inn had the keys.  The last of the Heronacs drank himself to death with absinthe in Paris, so the place was closed, and was no doubt for sale. ‘Mais oui!’ he told us.  Simone was terrified to cross the wretched bridge, with the water swirling beneath, and we left her to go back to the Inn, while the landlord’s son came with me.  It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and was a most extraordinary day, for now it began to thunder and lighten.”

“I wonder you were not afraid.”

“I am never afraid—­I tell you, it suited me.  There was still some furniture in the roofed part of the inner court, and in the two great towers which flank the main building—­but in that the roof was off, but the view from the windows when we crept along to them across the broken floor was too superb, straight out to the ocean, the waves thundering at the base.  I made up my mind that night I would buy it if I could—­and, as I told you before, I did so in the following week.”

“How quaint of you!”

“It has been the greatest delight to me, and, as you will see, I have done something with it.  I restored the center, and have made its arrangements modern and comfortable, but have left that one huge room on the first floor as it was, only with the roof mended.  I spend hours and hours in the deep window embrasures looking right over the sea.  It has taught me more of the meaning of things than all my books.”

“You speak as though you were an old woman,” Lord Fordyce exclaimed, “and you look only a mere child now—­then, when you bought this brigand’s stronghold, you must have been in the nursery!”

“I was over eighteen!”

“A colossal age! it was simply ridiculous for you to be wanting dark castles and solitude.  What—?” and then he paused; he did not continue his question.

“I was really very old—­I had been old for almost a year.”

“And do you mean to remain old always, or will you ever let anyone teach you to be young?”

Sabine looked away into the somber fir trees.  They had got to a part of the path where the woods on either side are black as night in their depths.

“I—­don’t—­know,” she said, very low.

Lord Fordyce moved nearer to her.

“I wish you would let me try to take away all those somber thoughts I see sometimes in those sweet eyes.”

“How would you begin?”

“By loving you very much—­and then by trying to make you love me.”

“Does love take away dark thoughts, then—­or does it bring them?”

“That depends upon the love,” he told her, eagerly.  “When it is great enough to be unselfish, it must bring peace and happiness, surely——­”

“They are good things—­they are harmony—­but——­”