Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/292

 very door. But her smile died away, for his face was grave. Only in his eyes something that was bright and fierce and like a flame leapt up and shone a moment.

“You!” he said.

And Sybil answered as most people do to such questions: “Yes, me.” There was a pause: her eyes wandered from his to the blank face of the house, the tangle of the untidy garden. “Mayn’t I come in?” she asked.

“Yes; oh yes, come in!”

She crossed the threshold—the doorstep was dank with green mould—and followed him into a room. It was a large room, and perfectly bare: no carpet, no curtains, no pictures. Loose bricks were arranged as a fender, and dead embers strewed the hearth. There was a table; there was a chair; there were scattered papers, pens, and ink. From the window one saw the neglected garden, and beyond it the round shoulders of the hills.

He drew forward the one chair, and she sat down. He stood with his back to the fireless grate.

“You are very, very pretty,” he said suddenly. And the explanation of his disappearance