This feeling did not last long, for gradually it evaporated, a blank despair taking its place. There was no means of knowing the time, but a faint suspicion of chill in the air made her suspect it to be still early morning. Even so, it meant that she had been missing from the _château_ for twelve or thirteen hours, sufficient time to have confirmed the worst misgivings of her father and of her fellow-refugees. Thoughts of her father hurt. His gentle soul would suffer from the uncertainty of her fate. What would he imagine had happened to her? Would he suspect the truth? She endeavoured to persuade herself that such a thought would be farthest from his mind, but unfortunately she realized only too well that one of the most possible solutions of her disappearance would be what had actually occurred. What would the White Knight say? As not infrequently happened, her thoughts turned toward her two brief recollections of her rescuer. Extraordinarily enough, each time she had met him they had remained in pitch darkness, so her only memory of him was his voice. The thought of him thrilled her. In thinking of him who was known as the White Knight she became aware of an extraordinary glow of warmth within her, as though, at the mention of his name, there was kindled an inward fire. Her blood pounded through her body all the more hotly because of it, and, almost against her will, her brain visioned dreams--light fairy fancies which airily danced to the blithe tune of her innermost desires. As yet she was unaware of the reason. In her life of partial seclusion, her father and his work had occupied the greater part of her thoughts, so that his alone would not be the triumph when his book finally saw the light of day. Her work and her encouragement had been invaluable to him. With her day occupied, and her maternal instincts satisfied in the loving care of her father, men had somehow failed to find a place within the limit of her mental horizon. Love, marriage, and motherhood had been names only; to be venerated in due course admittedly, but as yet relegated to some future time. She naïvely believed her interest in the White Knight to be unexpressed thanks for his deliverance of her father and herself from the clutches of the Communists, and therefore it did not seem unusual that the memory of the deep vibrant clarity of his voice should ring so repeatedly in her ears. Strangely enough, the quality of their voices was to each of them a revelation of the other, for it had been the fearlessness, the steadiness, the sweet cadence of Elizabeth's tone which had first attracted the White Knight's attention, though afterward her voice ceased to be remarkable because it inevitably became an integral part of her charm and beauty.