I shall never forget that drive; the horses were those Russian horses that go as if they were mad; the air was all filled with the smell of autumn, and the earth seemed as silent as the leaden-coloured sky. The park lay all dull-coloured and damp, the great trees were standing with their leaves hanging down. Miles and miles of park we passed through; there were sober and sad-coloured hills in the distance that seemed to watch us with a mournful air. The country had for me the aspect of fate as it lay around us, silent as a dream, the trees dropped their withered leaves, the clouds passed by, the wind blew, and clouds and wind and trees all said to me in their own language, the past, the past, the past. Once Geraldine said, "When I saw you before, so long ago, you were not dressed as you are now." No, Geraldine, I said to myself, when you saw me before, so long ago, I was dressed as a man. But I did not answer her in words. CHAPTER XIV THE BALLADE OF THE FALCON To the deep window of the library, where I am sitting now wrapped in shawls and scribbling this, I came that day after our drive to sit and think, and stare out of the double windows at the dusky garden, and wait for tea. I had taken an old book from one of the library shelves. It was "The whole art of Falconry," dedicated to his Majesty, King Charles the First, by his liege servant--I forget whom. When I was tired with looking out of the window I turned over the leaves of the book; they smelt of age. Between the cover and the last leaf was a manuscript, the ink faded, the paper mildewed. I spelt it out in the dusk. It was a ballad written in a curious, old-fashioned hand. It was about a little falcon which a lady had given to her lover; he killed her in a fit of passion, and he killed the little falcon, or "the little hawke," as the ballad sometimes called it, and then he killed himself. As I read it grew sadder and sadder, it seemed to moan to me like a living thing, and my eyes became blind with tears so that I could scarcely read it in the twilight. It was all about the little falcon, but I knew that the pity was meant for the cavalier. Perhaps the writer dared not express it openly, for was not the cavalier an assassin and a suicide? This is the last verse, as well as I remember-- "With the little falcon prest To his cold and lifeless breast, They laid him to his rest. And the ballade humbly prays The tribute of your sighs For the hawke's blinde little eyes, --And the cavalier who lies By the four cross ways." Ah! the dead hand that wrote that long ago betrayed itself in the two last lines, "And the cavalier who lies By the four cross ways." I laid it down and cried as if my heart would break. I was crying, not for the cavalier but for "the little hawke." CHAPTER XV MY LETTER