bold
silver tracery on the small sofa.

She smiled at him once, but, for the most part, she was lost in revery.
Ludowika had a fan, to hold against the fire; and her white fingers were
playing with its polished black sticks and glazed paper printed with an
ornamental bar of music. A faint colour stained her cheeks as he watched
her, and set his heart tumultuously beating. He told himself over and
over, with an unabated sense of wonder, that she was his. He longed for
the moment when they could discard all pretence and be frankly,
completely, together. That must happen after Felix Winscombe arrived.
Meanwhile he was forced to content himself with a look, a quick or
lingering contact of fingers, the crush of her body against his
momentarily in a passage. They had returned once to the rock where he
had first been intoxicated by her; in a strangling wave of emotion he
had taken her into his arms; but she had broken away. The width of the
stream and screen of trees had apparently disconcerted Ludowika, and she
contrived to make him feel inexcusably young, awkward.

But usually he dominated her; there was a depth to his passion that
achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at
him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight
in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He
reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there
was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now
than formerly; but he was eager for the climax to pass, impatient to
claim his own.

As if a dam had been again thrown across the flood of his emotions he
felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in
feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark,
trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant
apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house
at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God,
if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished
and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in
frosty immensities of silence. He stood at the open window with his
shoulders bare, revelling in the cold air that flowed over him, defying
winter, death itself. The moon waned immutably.

David was now at Shadrach Furnace, living with the Heydricks, and the
necessities that brought him to Myrtle Forge were