ve, I know. You do not know what
it is. So you must not grow to love me--or, at least, not too much. Then
you will be ready when the True Love that waits somewhere comes your
way."

She left me standing without a word. She ran up the steps swiftly. On
the topmost she poised a moment, as a bird does for flight.

"Good-night, Douglas!" she said. "Stephen is a name too common for
you--I shall call you Douglas. Remember, you must love me a little--but
not too much."

I stood dull and stupid, in a maze of whirling thought. My great lady
had suddenly grown human, but human of a kind that I had had no
conception of. Only this morning I had been opening the stores of very
chill wisdom to my pupil, Henry Fenwick of Allerton. Yet here, long ere
night was at its zenith, was I, standing amazed, trying under the stars
to remember exactly what a woman had said, and how she looked when she
said it.

"To love her a little--yet not to love her too much."

That was the difficult task she had set me. How to perform I knew not.

At the top of the steps I met Henry.

"Do you think that we need go on to-morrow morning?" he said. "Do you
not think we are in a very good quarter of the world, and that we might
do worse than stop a while?"

"If you wish it, I have no objections," I said, with due caution.

"Thank you!" he said, and ran off to give some further directions about
his guns.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW DAY

It need not be wondered at that during the night I slept little. It
seemed such a strange thing which had happened to me. That a great lady
should lean upon my arm--a lady of whom before that day I had never
heard--seemed impossible to my slow-moving Scots intelligence.

I sat most of the night by my window, from which I looked down the
valley. The moonlight was filling it. The stars tingled keen and frosty
above. Lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the chasm. On the
horizon there was a flush of rose, in the midst of which hung a snowy
peak like a wave arrested when it curves to break, and on the upmost
surge of white winked a star.

I opened the casement and flung it back. The cool, icy air of night took
hold on me. I listened. There came from below the far sound of falling
waters. Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly. A dull, muffled sound,
vast and mysterious, rose slumberously. I remembered that I was near to
the great Alps. Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche.

But more than all these