But when the sledge finally turned in under the low gateway and drew up in the small courtyard of the inn--when with wearied feet and shaking knees she walked up those oaken stairs, it seemed to her that the vivid memories which the whole place recalled were far harder to bear than those more intangible ones which--waking and sleeping--had tortured her up to now. The bedroom too, with the smaller one leading out of it, was the same 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.