When the magical footsteps were now some way behind them the old woman pulled Ramon Alonzo suddenly sideways, and they huddled or fell past two loose planks in the wall to a cranny behind the wainscot. She had known of this place for years. Rats, damp, and woodworm, and other servants of time, had gradually made it larger. There was just room for the two to hide there. They lay there waiting while the steps came nearer; and all the while Ramon Alonzo held the shadow, though it fluttered to come to the charwoman. Somehow she stifled her breathing, though she had been nearly gasping; and the steps drew near and passed. That he was looking for them they could not doubt, but they felt as he passed so near that he had not learned as yet of the opening of his shadow-box. For he was muttering questioningly to himself as he went: “Ramon Alonzo? Ramon Alonzo?”
The charwoman held the young man by the wrist, and listened, as she held him, to the footsteps going away.
“Now,” she said suddenly.
They rose in cautious silence, though one of the timbers creaked; they left the mouldering nook and tiptoed away; they heard the magician turn and come back down the corridor; and then they were running for the door to the wood.
The magician had quickened his steps, but they reached the door in time; and were out into the wood before they saw him, though they often looked over their shoulders. They ran through the wood not only to avoid his pursuit, but to be as far away as they could before he used his enchantments, for both of them feared that as soon as he found they were gone he would go to his sinister room and take from a spell-locked box some potent weapon of wizardry and loosen its deadly power towards the wood. And they did well to run, though they did not know, as those know who have studied the science of magic, that the power of any spell or enchantment lessens according to the square of the distance.
And the magician never caught them either with weapon or spell, but they ran on safe through the wood; and at the edge of it in the wholesome sunlight, which, more than anything else yet known to science, arrests the passage of spells, the old woman sank on to the grass exhausted.
XXVI
The Wonderful Casting
They felt that they were safe in that honest sunlight. And Ramon Alonzo, sitting near the old crone while she rested, looked longingly at that young and delicate shadow which he had not thought to see for so long as this. He held it still in his hands, but now the time was come to give it up, for his old companion was shadowless, and to this he had pledged her his word. He must give it up to take a wizened shape; for shadow and substance must be alike in outline, as all the world knows. He must give it up and end his love-story that was not three hours old. He would see that profile change; he would see those curls scatter to thin wisps; he would lead the old woman back to her Aragona; and then go forth alone to join the forlorn companionage, that he felt sure there must somewhere be, of men that had loved a shadow. Meanwhile the old woman rested; she could spare him a little longer that shadow on which all his young dreams were builded, dreams that he knew, as youth so seldom knows, would soon come tottering down.
He turned from dark thoughts of his future to think of hers. What would the old thing do, back in a world again that had gone so far without her? Her parents would be dead, who knew how long? None would know her in Aragona. How would she fare there?
He turned to her to make again that offer that he had made once before. “If ever you weary of Aragona,” he said.
“Ah, Aragona,” she interrupted. “How could one weary of it?”
“If you wish for a warm house,” he said, “for light work, for little comforts, I know my father will give you employment.”
Again that strange smile that he had seen amongst her old wrinkles when he had offered this before. He had intended to say much of his home; telling of the comfort of it, its quaint old nooks, its pleasant rooms, the mellow air about it; and how a charwoman might saunter there with none to vex her, dusting old tapestries slowly and resting when she would, doing easy work to keep just ahead of the spider, dusting as quietly and leisurely as he spun, till the rays came in all red through the western windows; sitting and watching then the faces of olden heroes reddening to life in the rays, and all the tapestries wakening in the sun’s moment of magic. No, he would not have used that word, for she was weary of magic. He would have spoken of the sun’s benediction, which truly those rays would have been, on that old face in the evening in the happy quiet of his home. But his words all halted before that smile, and he said no more at all.
“Then I will take you to Aragona,” he said after a while.
“As you will,” she said.
He did not understand such listless words about her loved Aragona; he did not understand her smile. But she was more rested now; the end was near; she must have back her shadow. He gazed again at the young curly head, the happy lips and slender shape of that sweet shadow; then looking up he saw that the end which was near was now. For a man was coming towards them along a track
