This is my fairest prospect. And yet at that moment it offered me no peace. I was so infinitely lonely. With Penelope at my side, I said, I could stand here for hours feasting my eyes on so lovely a picture. To me, alone, it gave nothing. I should be happier with the Bennetts, forgetting self and self's vague longings in a plunge into the fraternal dispute.
I turned away into a narrow alley, but I was unaccustomed to Perugian streets and had not solved the mystery of their windings. Suddenly, passing a corner, I found myself again in the deserted piazza, and, looking down the slope, saw the same picture framed by palace walls. First my eyes grasped the panorama of plain and mountain. Then I saw only the terrace.
It was not mine any longer to hold in loneliness. I brushed my hand across my eyes to sweep away the taunting image. But she held there by the wall, leaning over it, her chin resting in her hands, wrapped in contemplation. Her face was turned from me, but there was no mistaking that still, black figure. If she heard my footfalls and the click of my cane, she gave no sign of being aware of my approach, but looked straight out over the plain. I checked an impulse to call her name and stood for a moment watching her. Would she greet me, I asked, with that same chilling stare with which she had said good-by? I feared it. But I tiptoed down the slope to the wall, and, leaning over it in silence, enjoyed the stolen pleasure of her presence. Whether she would or not, we looked together over the fair land. And what a prospect it was with Penelope at my side!
She took a step back, and stood there, very straight, surveying me, as though she were not quite sure that it could be. I searched her eyes for a hostile gleam, but found none, and when her hand met mine it was with a friendly and firm grasp.
"Penelope," said I, "as I came down the hill there and saw you, I thought that I dreamed."
"And I," said she, "when I turned and found David Malcolm beside me. I had heard that you were in the Sudan."
"Much as I should have liked to bury myself in the Sudan, there were calls from home," I returned.
"From Miss Dodd--what are you laughing at, David? From Miss Todd, I mean. How could you talk of burying yourself when you have such happiness before you? But, David, why do you laugh?"