But on the evening of the 18th at the Hotel of the Four Kings in Chiavagno Mary received another message.  It was from me and told her that I was crossing the Staub at midnight and would be at the inn before dawn.  It begged her to meet me there, to meet me alone without the others, because I had that to say to her which must be said before Ivery’s coming.  I have seen the letter.  It was written in a hand which I could not have distinguished from my own scrawl.  It was not exactly what I would myself have written, but there were phrases in it which to Mary’s mind could have come only from me.  Oh, I admit it was cunningly done, especially the love-making, which was just the kind of stammering thing which I would have achieved if I had tried to put my feelings on paper.  Anyhow, Mary had no doubt of its genuineness.  She slipped off after dinner, hired a carriage with two broken-winded screws and set off up the valley.  She left a line for Wake telling him to follow according to the plan—­a line which he never got, for his anxiety when he found she had gone drove him to immediate pursuit.

At about two in the morning of the 19th after a slow and icy journey she arrived at the inn, knocked up the aged servants, made herself a cup of chocolate out of her tea-basket and sat down to wait on my coming.

She has described to me that time of waiting.  A home-made candle in a tall earthenware candlestick lit up the little salle-a-manger, which was the one room in use.  The world was very quiet, the snow muffled the roads, and it was cold with the penetrating chill of the small hours of a March night.  Always, she has told me, will the taste of chocolate and the smell of burning tallow bring back to her that strange place and the flutter of the heart with which she waited.  For she was on the eve of the crisis of all our labours, she was very young, and youth has a quick fancy which will not be checked.  Moreover, it was I who was coming, and save for the scrawl of the night before, we had had no communication for many weeks . . .  She tried to distract her mind by repeating poetry, and the thing that came into her head was Keats’s ‘Nightingale’, an odd poem for the time and place.

There was a long wicker chair among the furnishings of the room, and she lay down on it with her fur cloak muffled around her.  There were sounds of movement in the inn.  The old woman who had let her in, with the scent of intrigue of her kind, had brightened when she heard that another guest was coming.  Beautiful women do not travel at midnight for nothing.  She also was awake and expectant.

Then quite suddenly came the sound of a car slowing down outside.  She sprang to her feet in a tremor of excitement.  It was like the Picardy chateau again—­the dim room and a friend coming out of the night.  She heard the front door open and a step in the little hall . . .

She was looking at Ivery. . . .  He slipped his driving-coat off as he entered, and bowed gravely.  He was wearing a green hunting suit which in the dusk seemed like khaki, and, as he was about my own height, for a second she was misled.  Then she saw his face and her heart stopped.