out of my thoughts. You'll help me, a harmless magic. I'll be as simple
as that girl across the road, with the red cheeks, in a single slip. You
must call me Ludowika; Ludowika and Howat. I'm not so terribly old, only
twenty-nine."

"I am going away to-morrow," he informed her; "I won't be back before
you leave."

A slight frown gathered about her eyes. Her face was very close to his.
"But I don't like that either," she replied. "You were to be a part of
it, its voice; excursions in the woods. Is it necessary, your absence?"

He knew that it was not; and suddenly he was seized with the conviction
that he would not go. It was as if, again, a voice outside him had
informed him of the fact. But if there were no reason for his going
there was as little for his remaining at Myrtle Forge; that was, so far
as Ludowika Winscombe was concerned. He had been untouched by all that
she had said; untouched except for a faint involuntary shiver as she had
spoken of premonition. And that had vanished instantaneously. There was
his duty in the counting house. But he was forced to admit to himself
the insufficiency of that reason; it was too palpably false.

He had not been moved by the intent of what she had said, but his
imagination had been stirred, as if by the touch of delicate, pointed
fingers, at her description of Court--a bed with a silk counterpane ...
behind clipped greenery. He recalled the fan with its painted
Villeggiatura, the naked, wanton loves. "Something different," she half
repeated, with a sigh, an accent, of longing. Howat heard her with
impatience; it was absurd to try to picture her tramping in the
wilderness, breaking her way hour after hour through thorned underbrush,