Angelina would be alone, accessible.
It was her duty to guard the house in the absence of its mistress. He
might have gone there on some pretext and talked awhile, and looked
into her elvish eyes and listened to that Southern voice, rich and
clear as a bell. Almost he yielded. He thought of the ineptitude of the
whole undertaking and, in particular, of those slippery stairs; one
might break one's neck there at such an hour of the night. Unless one
wore tennis shoes--
Well, he would wear them. He would resist the temptation and approve
himself a man. Everybody, even the Duchess, was always telling him to
be a man. He would find himself. Keith was right.
The night came.
He descended noiselessly into the cool and dark chasm, resting awhile
on a ledge about half-way down, to drink in the spirit of the place.
All was silent. Dim masses towered overhead; through rifts in the rocky
fabric he caught glimmerings, strange and yet familiar, of the
landscape down below. It swam in the milky radiance of a full moon
whose light streamed down from some undiscoverable source behind the
mountain, suffusing the distant vineyards and trees with a ghostly
tinge of green.
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