, who cannot be still
in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and
then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and
went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host
of the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the
end of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and many
things that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar,
counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts of
her.

She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to
sleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made
my simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept.

But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so,
gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the
cave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very
deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the
splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it
sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no
longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I
arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding
silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as
I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I
touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow,
a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the
suspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made
the silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the
dripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and
heard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hair
with my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as if
in sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it,
Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, and
I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead to
be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, little
Leda--'

I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with
passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in
her breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back
to the cave I stole in haste.

And the next