Her hair was falling over her
shoulders. Willan's heart gave a bound as he looked at her. Before he
had fairly seen her, she had turned to fly.
"Yes, it is I,--it is I," he called after her. "Wilt thou not come
back?"
"Nay," answered Victorine, from the upper stair; "that I may not do, for
the house is alone." Victorine was herself now, and was wise enough not
to go quite out of sight. She looked entrancing between the dark wooden
balustrades, one slender hand holding to them, and the other catching up
part of her hair. "When my aunt returns, if she bids me to wait at
supper I shall see thee." And Victorine was gone.
"Then sing for me at thy window," entreated Willan.
"I know not the whole of any song," cried Victorine; but broke, as she
said it, into a snatch of a carol which seemed to the poor infatuated
man at the foot of the stairway like the song of an angel. He hurried
out, and threw himself down under the pear-tree where he had lain
before. The blossoms had all fallen from the pear-tree now, and through
the thinned branches he could see Victorine's window distinctly.
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