"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me half-convinced of what I should do." "I can stay no longer." "Why can you not come again?" "You plan to trap me," she reproached. "No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make a movement toward you." "Not try--to see me, even?" she hesitated. "Not even that, if you forbid." There was a long pause. "Perhaps----" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room. She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time light flashed over the room. I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was disappointed. As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay. I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of sunrise. CHAPTER VII "For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate perfumes."--ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY. The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night. My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in a shining content that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere rose while Phillida welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs. The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big brindle cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; no dainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a battling cat of ring experience.