Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/167

Rh the rustle of every leaf. Something invisible, intangible yet potent, brooded over Cray’s Folly. I began to think more kindly of the disappearance of Val Beverley during the afternoon. Doubtless she, too, had been touched by this spirit of unrest and in solitude had sought to dispel it.

So thinking, I walked on in the direction of the Tudor garden. The place was bathed in a sort of purple half-light, lending it a fairy air of unreality, as though banished sun and rising moon yet disputed for mastery over earth. This idea set me thinking of Colin Camber, of Osiris, whom he had described as a black god, and of Isis, whose silver disk now held undisputed sovereignty of the evening sky.

Resentment of the treatment which I had received at the Guest House still burned hotly within me, but the mystery of it all had taken the keen edge off my wrath, and I think a sort of melancholy was the keynote of my reflections as, descending the steps to the sunken garden, I saw Val Beverley, in a delicate blue gown, coming toward me. She was the spirit of my dreams, and the embodiment of my mood. When she lowered her eyes at my approach, I knew by virtue of a sort of inspiration that she had been avoiding me.

“Miss Beverley,” I said, “I have been looking for you all the afternoon.”

“Have you? I have been in my room writing letters.”

I paced slowly along beside her.

“I wish you would be very frank with me,” I said.

She glanced up swiftly, and as swiftly lowered her lashes again.

“Do you think I am not frank?”

“I do think so. I understand why.”