I caught at a straw. "Sylvia," I cried, "let us sit down and finish the story! We can surely do that. Come, it is all ready in my mind. I will dictate rapidly."
She shook her head. "Hardly," she answered, "after what has been said. Here are your pages."
I took the pages she handed me, because she had written them.
"Sylvia," I exclaimed, "I shall finish that story, and you shall hear it! This I vow."
"I am going now," she responded. "Good-by."
"Sylvia," I cried, quickly stepping after her as she moved away, "will you not say more than that? Will you not even give me your hand?"
"I will do that," she replied, stopping, "if you will promise not to kiss it."
I took her hand, and held it a few moments without a word. Then she gently withdrew it.
"Good-by again," she said, "I don't want you to forget me; but when you think of me, always think of me as a sister of the House of Martha."
As I stood looking after her, she rapidly walked toward the house, and I groaned while thinking I had not told her that if she ever thought of me she must remember I loved her, and would love her to the end of my life. But in a moment I was glad that I had not said this; after her words to me it would have been unmanly, and, besides, I knew she knew it.
When I lost sight of her in the grove by the house, I turned and picked up the pages of the story of Tomaso and Lucilla, which I had dropped. In doing so I saw her inkstand, with its open case near by it, on the ground by the stone on which she had been sitting. I put the inkstand in its case, closed it, and stood for some minutes holding it and thinking; but I did not carry it away with me as a memento. Drawing down a branch of the tree, I hung the little case securely by its handles to a twig, where it would be in full view of any one walking that way.
I found Walkirk still fishing near the place where I had left him.
"I was beginning to be surprised at your long absence," he said, "and was thinking of going to look for you. Have you had good luck?"
This was a hard question to answer. I smiled grimly. "I have not been fishing," I answered. "I have been dictating my story to my nun."
The rod dropped from the relaxed fingers of my under-study, and he stood blankly staring at me, and waiting for an explanation. I gave it.