y likely I shall not rap
at all."

Wogan shivered as he spoke. It was not for the first time during that
conversation, and a little later, as they stood together in the passage
by the stair-head, Clementina twice remarked that he shivered again.
There was an oil lamp burning against the passage wall, and by its light
she could see that on that warm night of spring his face was pinched
with cold. He was in truth chilled to the bone through lack of sleep;
his eyes had the strained look of a man strung to the breaking point,
and at the sight of him the mother in her was touched.

"What if I watched to-night?" she said. "What if you slept?"

Wogan laughed the suggestion aside.

"I shall sleep very well," said he, "upon that top stair. I can count
upon waking, though only the lowest step tremble beneath a foot." This
he said, meaning not to sleep at all, as Clementina very well
understood. She leaned over the balustrade by Wogan's side and looked
upwards to the sky. The night was about them like a perfume of flowers.
A stream bubbled and sang over stones behind the inn. The courtyard
below was very silent. She laid a hand upon his sleeve and said again
in a pleading voice,--

"Let me watch to-night. There is no danger. You are racked by
sleeplessness, and phantoms born of it wear the face of truth to you. We
are safe; we are in Italy. The stars tell me so. Let me watch to-night."
And at once she was startled. He withdrew his arm so roughly that it
seemed he flung off his hand; he spoke in a voice so hoarse and rough
she did not know it for his. And indeed it was a different man who now
confronted her,--a man different from the dutiful servant who had
rescued her, different even from the man who had held her so tenderly in
his arms on the road to Ala.

"Go to your room," said he. "You must not stay here."

She stepped back in her surprise and faced him.

"Every minute," he cried in a sort of exasperation, "I bid myself
remember the great gulf between you and me; every minute you forget it.
I make a curtain of your rank, your title, and--let us be frank--your
destiny; I hang the curtain up between us, and with a gentle hand you
tear it down. At the end of it all I am flesh and blood. Why did I sit
the whole long dreary day out on the bank by the roadside there? To
watch? I could not describe to you one traveller out of them all who
passed. Why, then? Ask yourself! It was not that I might stand by your
side afterwards