When Ramon Alonzo returned to the house in the wood he sought at once for the charwoman, and found her in her nook amongst all her pails.
“Anemone,” he said, “I am going back to my home, for my sister has need of a love-potion.”
“For what purpose needs she that?” said the charwoman.
“I know not,” said Ramon Alonzo, “but she desired one.”
“Is she not young?” said the charwoman.
“Aye,” said Ramon Alonzo, “but perhaps she wished to make sure.”
“Aye, they are sure, those potions,” said the charwoman, for she knew much of magic, having minded that house for so long. “Only let him see her first after he hath drunk of the potion, or even be nearest to her at that time, and he hath no escape after that from magical love. You have the potion there?” For Ramon Alonzo had the vial in his hand.
“Aye,” said he, “I made it myself in the wood.”
“He taught you how?”
“Yes,” said Ramon Alonzo.
“And for that you gave your shadow,” she said sorrowfully.
And he would have explained to her that he had learned more than this, but she would not heed him, only sitting on the straw with dejected head, and mourning to herself over his shadow.
Then seeing her sorrowful face, and the gloom of that dark nook, and the sombre melancholy of all things round her, he sought to persuade her to flee from the house in the wood, and he would escort her into Aragona. But she only said: “The world is harder than his house.”
He reasoned with her, saying suave things of the world; but she only answered: “There is no place for me there.”
And then he said: “I will come back for you, and when I come I will get back your shadow.”
And she shook her head sorrowfully as she always shook it whenever he spoke of that.
“But I have a plan,” he said.
And when she only shook her head again he told her what his plan was.
“I saw the spell,” he said, “when he opened the shadow-box, and have seen it again since. It is in Chinese and I cannot speak it, but now I remember it well, each syllable; and I will learn the art of the pen and then I will make the likeness of one of those syllables upon parchment. There are three syllables, but I will make the likeness of only one at first, and with it I shall write words of my own imagining, making them square and outlandish. And I shall say to him: ‘Master, I was given this writing by a heathen man that I met. I pray you read it for me.’ ”
She listened at first, but when he spoke of writing words of his own imagining she turned again to her melancholy.
“But hearken,” he said, and his eagerness gained her attention. “Oft as he reads he mutters, and if the room be dark and the script small then he will mutter surely, and I hear the words that he mutters. Now when all the script is strange to him but one word, he will surely mutter that one and then stop and ponder; and I shall hear that word and remember. And then some days must go by, and many days; and then one day I will bring him another script, with the second syllable, and long afterwards the third, and then I shall have the spell.”
She was listening now with a look on her face that seemed to be like hope; but hope had been absent from her face so long that if it now shone in her eyes its image there was too faint for Ramon Alonzo to be quite sure what it was. And after a while she said: “Learn not the art of the pen from him. There are good men that can teach that art, and not only he.”
“Why?” said Ramon Alonzo.
“Because,” she said, “if he deems that you have not the art he will not suspect you wrote it.”
And then Ramon Alonzo knew that she hoped, for she had taken a part in his plan. And for a long while they talked of it. And all the while the faint hope of the charwoman grew, and her eyes shone now with a bright unwonted light in the haggard withered face.
One thing she warned him which Ramon Alonzo remembered, and that was to give up his false shadow to the magician before he opened the shadow-box, if ever he should be able to open it. For the magician could cut off the false shadow, having the necessary tools; but if this were not done he would never be able to rid himself of it and would always have two shadows, a true and a false. Thus they plotted together; but Ramon Alonzo thought nothing of his own shadow, planning only to rescue hers, with his thoughts as they roved to the future fixed on nothing but the picture of her old face lit up by some feeble smile from a wan happiness when she should have her old shadow again.
And now the morning was wearing on to the hour when the magician would be astir, and Ramon Alonzo desired to be gone before he appeared. For he had acquired a lore in his youth which taught him ever to avoid the aged when merry plans were afoot; for the aged would come with their wisdom and slowness of thought, and other plans would be made, and there would be, at least, delay. So he was impatient to go, and yet he dallied, reluctant that any word should be the last, reluctant to leave the new plan that they had made between them, and reluctant to leave the old woman, who somehow held his sympathy
