Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/514

510 conduct; but perhaps by now lingering behind, she might hope to redeem at least the shadow of her independence.

There were many more of the round-topped stones scattered about; in shape like monster cheeses, and in brilliancy like crystallised sugar. István sat down upon another of these stones; and he also kept silent.

The torch that Gretchen had left in the niche still burnt brightly, but it was the brightness of approaching death. Each smouldering piece of firwood sent its floating breath upwards in circling wreaths. The lights leaped up and sank down, burning deep red and palest yellow by turns, while even the crackling of the firwood was enough to wake whispering echoes in the rock.

One torch flared up, scattered a few red sparks, then died down in an instant, swallowing, as it were, a whole vista of rock into darkness.

"You have made me very happy," said István at last, watching her fingers, as they moved in and out of her hair, still plaiting it up.

"Your happiness is cheap, then," she said, attempting to speak lightly, though her heart was beating fast; "and I don't know how you come by it now."

"Don't you? Merely by your staying here when I asked you."

"Really, Baron Tolnay, I cannot see how so absurd a trifle should affect you one way or the other."

"A trifle!" István gave a peculiar smile. "What is a trifle? A ribbon is a trifle; a flower is a trifle; and men have killed each other for less than that."

"Men are wiser than they used to be."

"Ha! Our old dispute; the age of reason and the age of romance. Do you remember our talk that evening by the fountain?"

"Well, yes, my memory is not short," she said, with studied indifference.

"Do you remember looking into the water?"

"Yes."

"Did you see anything there, I wonder?" said István, musing. "Was there nothing written in the Waters of Hercules?"

While he spoke, a second torch grew faint and went out. There were only three more torches burning now.

Gretchen dared give no answer to István's last words. She began to understand that she had done a very foolish thing when she sat down again upon this glittering stone. Far ahead she could see the rest of the party; the light of their torches shone towards the narrow entrance of the cave. How she longed to be with them! She would have risen, but some instinct told her that her first movement would conjure up the crisis which she dreaded; safety lay only in quiescence; she was prisoner upon her stone.

"You have made me very happy," said István again, slowly, softly, with a sort of lingering enjoyment in the words; "and you have made some one else very unhappy."

He paused for a moment, then said between his teeth –

"I hate that man."

He was very pale, and his eyes glittered; but the words had been so low that Gretchen felt herself exempt from the necessity of answering. And what answer could she have made, even had she been able to command her voice? Every word seemed loaded with gunpowder, and each one might explode.