ears, but without reaching, as happened, Milly's. It
was a commotion that left our observer intensely still and holding her
breath. What had first been offered her was the possibility of a latent
intention--however wild the idea--in such a posture; of some betrayed
accordance of Milly's caprice with a horrible hidden obsession. But
since Mrs. Stringham stood as motionless as if a sound, a syllable,
must have produced the start that would be fatal, so even the lapse of
a few seconds had a partly reassuring effect. It gave her time to
receive the impression which, when she some minutes later softly
retraced her steps, was to be the sharpest she carried away. This was
the impression that if the girl was deeply and recklessly meditating
there, she was not meditating a jump; she was on the contrary, as she
sat, much more in a state of uplifted and unlimited possession that had
nothing to gain from violence. She was looking down on the kingdoms of
the earth, and though indeed that of itself might well go to the brain,
it wouldn't be with a view of renouncing them. Was she choosing among
them, or did she want them all? This question, before Mrs. Stringham
had decided what to do, made others vain; in accordance with which she
saw, or believed she did, that if it might be dangerous to call out, to
sound in any way a surprise, it would probably be safe enough to
withdraw as she had come. She watched a while longer, she held her
breath, and she never knew afterwards what time had elapsed.

Not many minutes probably, yet they had not seemed few, and they had
given her so much to think of, not only while creeping home, but while
waiting afterwards at the inn, that she was still busy with them when,
late in the afternoon, Milly reappeared. She had stopped at the point
of the path where the Tauchnitz lay, had taken it up and, with the
pencil attached to her watch-guard, had scrawled a word--_a
bientot!_--across the cover; then, even under the girl's continued
delay, had measured time without a return of alarm. For she now saw
that the great thing she had brought away was precisely a conviction
that the future was not to exist for her princess in the form of any
sharp or simple release from the human predicament. It wouldn't be for
her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape. It would
be a question of taking full in the face the whole assault of life, to
the general muster of which indeed her face might have been dire