he callous answer struck him cold: "I
have not."

The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.

Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window. In
the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining
faintly, feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods were lifting up
to her: his star of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set about
flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland
keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.

A succession of hard sighs brought his father's hand on his shoulder.

"You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard!
Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
untruth!"

"Nothing at all, sir," the young man replied, meeting him with the full
orbs of his eyes.

The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.

At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he
said: "Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return to Raynham
at all to-night?"

His father was again falsely jocular:

"What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes' start?"

"Cassandra will take me," said the young man earnestly. "I needn't ride
her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried? I should be
down with him in little better than three hours."

"Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked."

"Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse, and
would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?"

The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked. At least, if he missed
his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same air, marking
what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed night-talk of the
trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances that were like hope
half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as Hesper, since he knew her.
There were two swallows under the eaves shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows:
two swallows, mates in one nest, blissful birds, who twittered and
cheep-cheeped to the sole-lying beauty in her bed. Around these birds the
lover's heart revolved, he knew not why. He associated them with all his
close-veiled dreams of happiness. Seldom a morning passed when he did not
watch them leave the nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy
stillness of dawn. It seemed to him now that if he could be at Raynham to
see them in to-morrow's dawn he would be compensated fo