Her physician sentenced her to the Alps, whither a friend, a daughter of our island, whose acquaintance she had made in Italy, was going, and at an invitation Clotilde accompanied her, and she breathed Alpine air.  Marko sank into the category of dreams during sickness.  There came a letter from the professor mentioning that Alvan was on one of the kingly Alpine heights in view, and the new blood running through her veins became a torrent.  He there!  So near!  Could he not be reached?

He had a saying:  Two wishes make a will.

The wishes of two lovers, he meant.  A prettier sentence for lovers, and one more intoxicating to them, was never devised.  It chirrups of the dear silly couple.  Well, this was her wish.  Was it his?  Young health on the flow of her leaping blood cried out that it could not be other than Alvan’s wish; she believed in his wishing it.  Then as he wished and she wished, she had the will immediately, and it was all the more her own for being his as well.  She hurried her friend and her friend’s friends on horseback off to the heights where the wounded eagle lodged overlooking mountain and lake.  The professor reported him outwearied with excess of work.  Alvan lived the lives of three; the sins of thirty were laid to his charge.  Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?  Her reckless defence of him, half spoken, half in her mind, helped her to comprehend his dealings with her, and how it was that he stormed her and consented to be beaten.  He had a thousand occupations, an ambition out of the world of love, chains to break, temptations, leanings . . . tut, tut!  She had not lived in her circle of society, and listened to the tales of his friends and enemies, and been the correspondent of flattering and flattered men of learning, without understanding how a man like Alvan found diversions when forbidden to act in a given direction:  and now that her healthful new blood inspired the courage to turn two wishes to a will, she saw both herself and him very clearly, enough at least to pardon the man more than she did herself.  She had perforce of her radiant new healthfulness arrived at an exact understanding of him.  Where she was deluded was in supposing that she would no longer dread his impetuous disposition to turn rosy visions into facts.  But she had the revived convalescent’s ardour to embrace things positive while they were not knocking at the door; dreams were abhorrent to her, tasteless and innutritious; she cast herself on the flood, relying on his towering strength and mastery of men and events to bring her to some safe landing —­the dream of hearts athirst for facts.

CHAPTER VI

Alvan was at his writing-table doing stout gladiator’s work on paper in a chamber of one of the gaunt hotels of the heights, which are Death’s Heads there in Winter and have the tongues in Summer, when a Swiss lad entered with a round grin to tell him that a lady on horseback below had asked for him—­Dr. Alvan.  Who could the lady be?  He thought of too many.  The thought of Clotilde was dismissed in its dimness.  Issuing and beholding her, his face became illuminated as by a stroke of sunlight.