"Not one word of it, Mr. Gerard."

"What do you mean?"

"The man is deaf. Don't look at him again. Don't speak to me again. Go
home--pray go home!"

Without further explanation, she abruptly entered the cottage, and shut
the door.

As I turned into the path which led through the wood I heard a voice
behind me. It said: "Stop, sir." I stopped directly, standing in the
shadow cast by the outermost line of trees, which I had that moment
reached. In the moonlight that I had left behind me, I saw again the man
whom I had discovered at the window. His figure, tall and slim; his
movements, graceful and easy, were in harmony with his beautiful face. He
lifted his long finely-shaped hands, and clasped them with a frantic
gesture of entreaty.

"For God's sake," he said, "don't be offended with me!"

His voice startled me even more than his words; I had never heard
anything like it before. Low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor
fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest
emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. In the astonishment of
the moment, I forgot what Cristel had told me. I answered him as I should
have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me.

"What do you want?"