CHAPTER XXVII BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND

He left the hospice at three o'clock, while it was yet light, and the journey to Brigue could be made in safety.

He had not spoken to her, but he knew that she was then in the chapel where the dead lie, and that she was aware of his presence. An instinct told him that it were better they should not meet in such a house of shadows. He had already determined to set out for England that night, and to think of Switzerland no more. In his own country he would find the place and the hour.

Of the future, his ideas were vague and indefinable. A call of ambition had returned in the interlude of reckoning, and found him resolute in response. A new world opened to his vision, a world which should recognise his genius and bid him profit by it. he would go to England this night and make himself known to those who would honour him. Thereafter strenuous days must follow, and the reaping of the harvest. He was as one whose life's task began upon a foundation of success; the stones of whose house were already hewn. In England he would come to his own. They waited for him impatiently there.

Just for an instant, as he crossed the courtyard, he saw her kneeling before the altar, her head bent in prayer and all her figure shrouded in the gloom. A dim light of tapers flickered in the little building and stood as symbols of the woe it harboured. She did not hear his step upon the stone, and he passed by unnoticed. But that was not the vision he carried with him upon his journey, nor the face the clear heaven showed him when the gate was closed and he set upon his journey.

It was growing dark then, and twilight had already come down upon the pass. The night fell still with a wonderful heaven of stars. He drove on in silence, saying no word to the man which did not bid him hasten.

The End