“There’s your dinner,” Mr. Treffry remarked.

With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.

But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and stared at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering his chin.

Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs. Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her lashes.

“Decided characters are charming, don’t you think so, Christian?” Mrs. Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling the words.  “That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense advantage for a man to know his mind.  You have only to look at that young man to see that he knows what he wants, and means to have it.”

Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly:  “Doctor Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon he said:  ‘Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall—­no, I shall not’; then he ordered the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers.”

Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.

When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to the piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she sat there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her aunt, who was reading Pater’s essays.  Christian too had taken up a book, but soon put it down—­of several pages she had not understood a word.  She went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping her hands behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder trembled among the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over the trees; and two great moths were hovering about a rosebush.  Christian watched their soft uncertain rushes.  Going to the little summer-house she flung herself down on a seat, and pressed her hands to her heart.

There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?  If so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the outlook of her life—­with the world waiting for her, the world of beauty, effort, self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash of that summer lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her all powers of flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale hovering moths.  Tears started up, and trickled down her face.  ‘Blind!’ she thought; ’how could I have been so blind?’

Some one came down the path.

“Who’s there?” she cried.

Harz stood in the doorway.

“Why did you come out?” he said.  “Ah! why did you come out?” He caught her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her eyes away, but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees, and cried:  “I love you!”

In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his hand.

“What are you doing?” she heard him say.  “Is it possible that you love me?” and she felt his kisses on her hair.