CHAPTER XXIII
A PASSIONATE PILGRIM
It seemed to Wrayson, as by and by he began to make bolder and more rapid progress, that it was an actual fairy world into which he was passing with beating heart and this strange new sense of delicious excitement. As he drew nearer, the round Norman towers and immense grey front of the château began to take to themselves more definite shape. The gardens began to spread themselves out; terraced lawns, from whose flower-beds, now a blurred chaos so far as colour was concerned, waves of perfume came stealing down to him; statuary appeared, white and ghostly in the half light, and here and there startlingly lifelike; there were trimmed shrubs, and a long wall of roses trailed down from the high stone balcony. But, as yet, there was no sound or sign of human life! That was to come.
Wrayson came to a pause at last. He had passed from the shelter of the woods into a laurel walk, but further than this he could not go without being plainly visible to any one in the château. So he waited and watched. There were lights, he could see now, behind many of the ground floor windows of the château, and more than once he fancied that he could catch the sound of music. He tried to fancy in which room she was, to project his passionate will through the twilight, so that she should come to him. But the curtains remained
