in
which she had slept. As the obsequious waiting-wench threw open the door
for the noble jongejuffrouw to pass through she saw before her the wide
open hearth with its crackling fire, the high-backed chair wherein she
had sat, the very footstool which he had put to her feet.

It seemed to her at first as if she could not enter, as if his splendid
figure would suddenly emerge out of the semi-darkness to confront her
with his mocking eyes and his smiling face. She seemed to see him
everywhere, and she had to close her eyes to chase away that all too
insistent vision.

The waiting-wench did not help matters either, for she asked
persistently and shyly about the handsome mynheer who had such an
irresistible fund of laughter in him. Maria too, in her mutterings and
grumblings, contrived--most unwittingly, since she adored Gilda--to
inflict a series of tiny pin-pricks on an already suffering heart.

Tired in body and in mind, Gilda could not sleep that night. She was
living over again every second of the past five days: the interview with
that strangely winning person--a stranger still to her then--here in
this room! how she had hated him at first! how she had tried to shame
and wound him with her words, trying all the while to steel her heart
against that irresistible gaiety and good humour which shone from him
like a radiance: then that second interview in Rotterdam! did she still
hate him then? and if not when was hatred first changed into the love
which now so completely filled her soul?

Looking back on those days, she could not tell. All that she knew was
that when he was brought before her helpless and pinioned she already
loved him, and that since that moment love had grown and strengthened
until her whole heart was given to that same nameless soldier of fortune
whom she had first despised.

To live over again those few brief days which seemed now like an
eternity was a sweet, sad pleasure which Gilda could endure, but what
became intolerable in the darkness and in the silence of the night was
the remembrance of the immediate past.

Clearly cut out before her mental vision were the pictures of her life
this morning in the hut beside the molens: and indeed, it was a lifetime
that had gone by in those few hours.

Firstly Stoutenburg's visit in the early morning, his smooth words and
careless chatter! she, poor fool! under the belief all the time that the
treacherous plot had been abandoned, and that she would