“It must not be,” was the firm answer. “But be not churlish or over reserved.”
“I wish for no company but thine,” replied Theirry. “What have I in common with these idlers?”
Dirk gave him a bright tender look.
“We need not stay here over long,” he answered. “I do think we know all this school can teach us.”
Theirry put back the laurel bough that swung between them.
“Where would you go?” he asked; it was noticeable how in all things he had begun to defer to the younger man.
“Paris! Padua!” flashed Dirk. “Would you consider that? One might attain a reputation, and then — or one might lecture —— in any large town — Cologne, Strasbourg.”
“Meanwhile —?”
“Meanwhile I progress,” was the whispered answer. “I have essayed — some things. Will you come to my chamber to-night?”
“Ay — secretly?”
Dirk nodded; his grave young face under the student’s flat hat was slightly flushed; he laid his hand on Theirry’s arm.
“I have something to tell you. Here it is scarcely wise to speak. There is one who hates me —— Joris of Thuringia. Now, good-bye.”
“
His great eyes lit with a look of strong affection that was flashed back in Theirry’s glance; they clasped hands and parted.
Theirry looked after the brown, silk-clad figure, as it moved rapidly towards the university, then he took his own way, out of the gardens on to the hill-side, away from the town.
With his hands clasped behind his back, and his handsome head bent, he followed aimlessly a little path, and as he wound his way through the trees wild day-dreams stirred his blood.
He was on the eve of putting himself in possession of immense power; these evil spirits whom he would force to serve him could give him anything in the world — anything in the world!
The phantasmagoria of golden visions that arose to blind and intoxicate him, the horror of the means employed, dread of the unthinkable end to come, were not to be put into any words.
He sat down at length on a fallen tree trunk and gazed with rapt eyes down the silent forest path.
He did not know where he was; certainly he had come farther than ever before, or else taken a strange turn, for through the pine-stems he could perceive castle walls, the gates rising from the piled-up rocks, and it was unknown to him.
Presently he rose and walked on, because his galloping thoughts would not allow his body to rest, and still giving no heed to the way, he wandered out of the forest into a green valley shaded by thick trees.
Down the centre ran a stream, and the grass, of a deep green colour, was thickly sown with daisies white as the snow shining on the far-off mountains.
Here and there down the edge of the stream grew young poplar trees, and their flat gold leaves fluttered like a gipsy’s sequins, even in the breezeless air.
Theirry, absorbed and withdrawn into himself, walked by the side of the water; he was unconscious of the shadowed hush and quiet of the valley, of the voices of birds falling softly from the peace of the frees, and the marvellous sunlight on the mountains, the castle, rising beyond its circle of shade up into the crystal blue; before his eyes danced thrones and crowns, gold and painted silks, glimpses of princely dwellings and little winged, creeping fiends that offered him these things.
Presently a human sound forced itself on his senses, insistently, even through his abstraction. The sound of weeping, sobbing.
He started, gazed about him with dazed eyes, like a blind man recovering sight, and discerned a lady upon the other side of the stream, seated on the grass, her head bowed in her right hand. Theirry paused, frowned, and hesitated.
The lady, warned of something, glanced up and sprang to her feet; he saw now that she held a dead bird in her left hand; her face was flushed with weeping, her long yellow hair disordered about her brow; she gazed at him with wet grey eyes, and Theirry felt it imperative to speak.
“You are troubled?” he asked, then flushed, thinking she might term it insolence.
But she answered simply and at once.
“About him I am”— she held the little brown bird out on her palm; “he was on the small poplar tree — and singing — he held his head up so”— she lifted her long throat —“and I could see his heart beating behind the feathers — I listened to him, oh! with pleasure”— fresh tears started to the eyes that she turned on Theirry —“then my miserable cat that had followed me leapt on him — and slew him. Oh, I chased them, but when I got him back he was dead.”
Theirry was extraordinarily moved by this homely tragedy; it could not have occurred to him that there was matter for tears in such a common thing; but as the lady told the story, holding out, as if secure of his sympathy, the poor little ruffled body, he felt that it was both pitiful and monstrous. “You may chastise the cat,” he said, for he saw the elegant soft animal rubbing itself against the stem of the poplar.
“I have beaten her,” she confessed.
“You can hang her,” said Theirry, thinking to console still more.
But the lady flushed up.
“She is an agreeable cat,” she answered. “She cannot help her nature. Oh, it would be an odious cruelty to hang her! — see, she does not understand!”
Theirry, rebuked, was at a loss; he stood looking at the lady, feeling helpless and useless.
She wiped her eyes with a silk handkerchief, and stood in a piteous meek silence, holding her dead bird in a trembling hand.
“If you buried it —” suggested Theirry desperately. “I do think it would have wished to be buried here —”
To his joy she brightened a little.
“You think so?” she asked wistfully.
“Certes!” he reassured her eagerly. “See, I have a knife — I will make a pleasant grave.”
She stepped to the edge of the stream as near as she could to him, and because she came unconsciously, with no thought for anything save the bird in her hand, Theirry thrilled with a great pleasure, as should a wild deer come fearlessly.
“I cannot cross — the water is too wide,” she said. “But will you take him and make his grave?”
She went on one knee among the sorrel leaves and daisies. Theirry had a swift picture of her as she leant forward, stretching her arm towards him over the stream that divided them. He had seen fair women in Courtrai, he saw in her the most admired points of these, glass grey eyes, small features, an arched red mouth, white skin and yellow hair; she was no more beautiful than many ladies who had left him cold, but he found himself anxious to please her, and he had so far never tried to win a woman’s favour.
Her pale red dress rippled about her on the grass; her curls and her veil were blown back from her face; Theirry knelt and held out his hand.
Over mid-stream their fingers touched; he took the bird, and she drew back hastily.
As he, still on his knees, looked at her, he saw that she was no longer unconscious; she stood erect as if commanding herself not to fly, and (as she was very slender) he likened her to the pale crimson pistil of a lily which has yellow on the head — her hair, he told himself.
“I am vexed to trouble you”— she spoke haltingly. There were so many things he wished to say in answer to this that he said nothing, but took his knife from his belt and cut a little square of turf.
“You are a clerk from the college?” she asked.
“Ay,”