Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books (Harvard College Library) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=1XsNAAAAYAAJ (Harvard College Library) WHEN LOVE CALLS BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "THE CASTLE INN," ETC., ETC. BOSTON BROWN AND COMPANY 144 Purchase Street 1899 _Copyright, 1899_ By Brown and Company University Press John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. Contents When Love Calls I. Her Story II. His Story A Strange Invitation The Invisible Portraits Along the Garonne When Love Calls I. HER STORY "Clare," I said, "I wish that we had brought some better clothes, if it were only one frock. You look the oddest figure." And she did. She was lying head to head with me on the thick moss that clothed one part of the river-bank above Breistolen near the Sogn Fiord. We were staying at Breistolen, but there was no moss thereabouts, nor in all the Sogn district, I often thought, so deep and soft, and so dazzling orange and white and crimson as that particular patch. It lay quite high upon the hills, and there were great gray boulders peeping through the moss here and there, very fit to break your legs if you were careless. Little more than a mile higher up was the watershed, where our river, putting away with reluctance a first thought of going down the farther slope towards Bysberg, parted from its twin brother who was thither bound with scores upon scores of puny green-backed fishlets; and instead, came down our side gliding and swishing, and swirling faster and faster, and deeper and wider, every hundred yards to Breistolen, full of red-speckled yellow trout all half-a-pound apiece, and very good to eat. But they were not so sweet or toothsome to our girlish tastes as the tawny-orange cloud-berries which Clare and I were eating as we lay. So busy was she with the luscious pile we had gathered that I had to wait for an answer. And then, "Speak for yourself," she said. "I'm sure you look like a short-coated baby. He is somewhere up the river too." Munch, munch, munch! "Who is, you impertinent, greedy little chit?" "Oh, you know," she answered. "Don't you wish you had your gray plush here, Bab?"