importunate; I shall say nothing to offend you; I shall not entreat you by word or look. I just wanted—wanted to see you: that is all.'
He spoke rather low, and rather more slowly than his wont; but next moment he resumed the ordinary tone of his speech.
' I came here a couple of years ago,' said he; ' and I carried away with me an extraordinary sense of coolness and rest. I think one's brain goes to sleep here. We Americans need that; we have awful insomnia of the brain. I want to go sliding on a silly sledge down a steep place; I want to fall about on skates, and not read the paper.'
Sybil laughed; there had been a certain modesty and good taste in his first speech that had rather touched her, and from that he had gone straight to ordinary converse. The assurance of the harmlessness of his intentions seemed to her very genuine. As a matter of fact, it was profoundly calculated, and produced just the effect he wanted; for he particularly desired to be admitted without embarrassment or delay into the others' party.
To Charlie's mind, this addition—for though Bilton never seemed to intrude himself, yet he usually was there—was nothing more at first than a slight nuisance. More than that, it could not be called, since he knew of Sybil's complete and final rejection of Bilton as a lover, and it was not consonant with the sweetness of his own nature to be rendered jealous and exacting about her friends. But by degrees—so gradual that he could not notice the growth of the feeling, but only register the fact that it had grown—he became aware of uneasiness of mind, which, as it increased, diminished from the great content in which he had passed the earlier weeks of their stay at Davos. Also he began to realize that in the shade of his mind there had grown up unconsciously a hope—or, if not a hope, the possibility of the
