"Come down," he called again, and waved at her with his slim, glittering stick. How far he had come since their last encounter, to wave at and command her, as if she were verily his own! She left the window, left the room, ran quickly down the stair. The house was hushed; no passing but her own, no butler in the hall, no kitchen-maid on the back stair. Only grim faces of pictures--ancestors not her own--glimmered reproachful upon her as she fled past. Light echoes called her back along the hall. The furniture, the muffling curtains, her own reflection flying through the mirrors, held up to her her madness, and by their mute stability seemed to remind her of the shelter she was leaving--seemed to forbid. She ran. This was not shelter; it was prison. He was rescue; he was light itself. The only chance for her was to get near enough to him. Near him no shadow lived. The thing was to get near enough. She rushed direct from shadow into light. She came out into the sun, into the garden with its blaze of wintry summer, its whispering life and the free air over it. The man standing in the middle of it, for all his pot hat and Gothic stick, was none the less its demigod waiting for her, laughing. He might well laugh that she who had written that unflinching letter should come thus flying at his call; but there was more than laughter, there was more than mischief in him. The high tide of his spirits was only the sparkle of his excitement. It was evident that he was there with something of mighty importance to say. Was it that her letter had finally touched him? Had he come at last to transcend her idea with some even greater purpose? She seemed to see the power, the will for that and the kindness--she could not call it by another word--but though she was beseeching him with all her silent attitude to tell her instantly what the great thing was, he kept it back a moment, looking at her whimsically, indulgently, even tenderly. "I have come for you," he said. "Oh, for me!" she murmured. Surely he couldn't mean that! He was simply putting her off with that. "I mean it, I mean it," he assured her. "This doesn't make it any less real, my getting at you through a garden. Better," he added, "and sweet of you to make the duller way impossible." She took a step back. It had not been play to her; but he would have it nothing else. He, too, stepped back and away from her. "Come," he said, and behind him she saw the lower garden gate that opened on the grassy pitch of the hill, swinging idle and open. The sight of him about to vanish lured her on, and as he continued to walk backward she advanced, following. "Oh, where?" she pleaded. "With me!" Such a guaranty of good faith he made it! She tried to summon her reluctance. "But why?" "We'll talk about it as we go along." His hand was on the gate. "We can't stop here, you know. She'll be watching us from the window."