Page:Son of the wind.djvu/225

RV 209 "No one will. We can go through my room and down the outside stair."

"Oh, no!"

"Come, don't be foolish."

"But they can see us from the kitchen windows."

"Very well! Is there any place in the house, then, where they can't, where we can be undisturbed for a little?"

She looked about, hesitated, gave him a glance. "Yes, over here." She started down the hall, toward the window, through which the moonlight came.

He followed, puzzled. Here in the hall there was not a chair to sit in, and all was in plain view from one end to the other. She went on toward the little pane of glass as if she fancied she could float through it like a ghost; but fairly upon it she stopped, took hold of a knob, and what had appeared as a window opened into a door, like the door in his room, with an upper transparent half. They passed out of it into a balcony. It was like coming out upon the edge of the world.

No steps led down from here, no roof was over them. The place hung in air, a poor, little neglected loggia, before the naked eye of night. In front of them were wooden pailings, imitating Italian balustrade. At one end stood a rattan couch, bleached by fronting many winters.