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At four Hogarth in the Throne-room alone was now afraid that he would not be able to utter a syllable, and wished that she would not come; then, in a minute, began to fear that she would not, and wondered whether he was not a deluded fool ever to have dreamed it, he walking quick, or anon listening like a thief in that half-dark: for few lights were shining, the hall like the after-flush of sunset just before the dark.
Why run one's head against the wall? First consider, then act; that was what she taught us whose sacred memory you have but now invoked, Alexander." With this he walked out of the half-dark corridor into the open court-yard, in front of his children. Here he looked at his daughter, who was breathing fast, and evidently prepared to resist to the last.
"Father Honoré, I've loved him so long and so truly, without hope, you know never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not loved that I think I do know what love is " Father Honoré smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told himself, that all would come right in the end work together for good.
But still as they were getting him down the stairs his voice could be heard in the half-dark room above, bleating more weakly and at longer intervals: "I am not Gurn! I am not Gurn!" Once more silence reigned in the room. After the three men had gone, Lady Beltham rose to her feet, tottered to the window, and stood there listening.
"It is only just nine " But White was gone. He pushed past the servant, one of the readiest and most dangerous of the colonel's instruments, and into the half-dark corridor. There was a light on the landing below, and as he ran down the stairs he thought he saw somebody standing there. It looked like a woman till the figure turned, and then Solomon White stood stock still.
As he was rising to make inquiries, the door of his chamber opened. The unknown concluded they were about to introduce the impatiently expected traveler, and made three precipitate steps to meet him. But, instead of the person he expected, it was Master Cropole who appeared, and behind him, in the half-dark staircase, the pleasant face of Madame Cropole, rendered trivial by curiosity.
Crowning the post at his side was his travelling bandanna, into which he had securely clasped by one great knot all his portable possessions. It was very early in the morning, in that half-dark and half-dawn time, when the muffled crowing begins to sound from the village barns and the dogs crawl forth from their barrels and survey the deserted street and yawn.
Here, in the half-dark, he was accustomed to sit and think; and his family let him sit and think, unconscious that it would sometimes be a kindness to break in upon the habit.
Not often did anything so pleasant enter the stupid old place! He made her sit on the sofa in the half-dark, sat down beside her, and in a few minutes had all her story. Moved by her sweet bright face and pretty manners, pleased with the deference, amounting to respect, which she showed him, he began to think her the nicest girl he had ever known.
It was a strange situation: the piquant fragrance that filled the air, the pleasure-loving women these people, so free and unconstrained, all strangers to one another, hidden in the elegant, half-dark salon, each following his most secret thoughts thoughts born of the mysterious, muffled music; whilst the firelight rose and fell, and made everything that was golden glimmer in the darkness.
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