Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/254

 and carried her hand to his lips. When he arose, it was with an averted face; he dared not look again upon her.

"Farewell, madame," he said gently, and struck off briskly down the path. Nor did he pause to look back. After some minutes he heard the voice of Chambret calling his name out frantically; and at that moment, discovering a by-path, O'Rourke took it, the better to elude pursuit. Presently, coming upon a purling little brook, deep in the silent, midnight heart of the forest, he sat him down upon the bank and there washed and bandaged his wound after a fashion. Then rising, he strode swiftly on, fagged with weariness and sick at his heart, but true to his code of honor; and to hold true to that, it seemed most essential that he should leave the eyes of Madame la Grand Duchesse de Lützelburg far behind him.

Late in the night he emerged from the forest and came upon a broad, inviting highroad, along which he settled down into a steady, league-consuming stride; and the continuous exercise began to send the blood tingling through his veins, making a brighter complexion for his thoughts. He kept his face towards the East—the mysterious East—and covered much ground.

It was a wonderful windy night of stars, bright, clear, bearing in upon the receptive mind of the imaginative Celt a sense of the vastness of the world. He lifted his head, sniffing eagerly at the free breezes, himself as free, and like the wind a vagrant, penniless. He was abroad in the open, foot-loose, homeless; the world lay wide before him, it seemed—the world of his choice, his birthright of the open road. And in his ears the Road was sounding its siren Call to the Wanderer.

And so he struck out, at first eastwards, but later verging