He looked at her full in the face, his own features softened, relenting for a time, as though her appeal had touched either his mental or his moral nature. Then slowly, as he saw the excellence of her, standing there, his face dropped back into its iron mold. "You are a wonderful woman," he said, "wonderful. You set me on fire--and it's only eight o'clock in the morning. I could crush you--I could tear you to pieces. I never saw your like, nor ever shall. Let you go? Yes! When I'm willing to let my blood and soul go. Not till then. If I were out in that graveyard, with my bones apart, and your foot crossed my grave, I'd get up and come, and live again with you--live--again. I say, I could live again, do you hear me?" She broke out into a torrent of hot speech. He did not seem to hear her. "The wrong of it," said he, "is that we should fight apart and not together. Do as you like for to-day. Be happy as you can. Let's live in the present, as we were, at least for to-day. But to-night--" He turned swiftly, and left her, so that she found left unsaid certain questions as well as certain accusations she had stored for this first meeting. CHAPTER XII THE NIGHT That night, Josephine St. Auban did not sleep. For hours she tossed about, listening. Infrequently, sounds came to her ears. Through the window came now and again faint notes of night-faring birds, south bound on their autumnal migration. Once in a while a distant step resounded in the great building, or again there came the distant voices of the negroes singing in their quarters beyond. The house had ceased its daily activities. The servants had left it. Who occupied it now? Was she alone? Was there one other? In apprehension which comes to the senses in the dark watches of the night--impressions, conclusions, based upon no actual or recognized action of the physical senses--Josephine rose, passed to the window and looked out. The moonlight lay upon the lawn like a broad silver blanket. Faint stars were twinkling in the clear sky overhead. The night brooded her planets, hovering the world, so that life might be. The dark outlines of the shrubbery below showed black and strong. Upon the side of a near-by clump of leafless lilacs shone a faint light, as though from one of the barred windows below. The house was not quite asleep. She stilled her breath as she might, stilled her heart as she might, lest its beating should be heard. What was about to happen? Where could she fly, and how?