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“I think we must look for our wraps,” said Lady Severn.
“It’s quite time: they’re beginning to light the Chinese lanterns,” said Guy.
It was while the Australian was telling Amber the story which had interested her so greatly that Ernest Clifton was listening to something that Josephine had to say to him—something that caused him a good deal of spare thought all the time he was driving to his rooms in St. James’s Street, and even after he had settled himself in his chair with a small tumbler half filled with Apollinaris on a table at his elbow.
The words that she had spoken to him at that time of soft sounds and lights and garden scents were not such as he had been accustomed to hear from her; though he could not but acknowledge to himself—he now and again acknowledged something to himself; never to any one else—that he had noticed signs of readiness on her part to say those very words. It had needed all his adroitness—and he had usually a pretty fair share at his command—to prevent her from saying them long ago.
“I wonder if you know how great a strain it is upon me to adhere to the compact which we made last year.”
Those were the words that she had spoken in his ear when the Terrace had become almost deserted, only Amber and Pierce Win wood remaining in the seats they had occupied while drinking their coffee, and she had spoken in so low a tone that, even with the band playing so soft and low as it was, no word could be heard by any one passing their chairs.
He had been slightly startled by her words—he thought now that he had time to think over the matter, that perhaps he should have seemed when in her presence to have been more startled than he actually was. But the fact was that he had been so startled as to be unable to discriminate exactly how startled he should seem.
It required a trained intelligence such as his to appreciate so delicate a train of thought as this. He felt that it would have been more flattering to her if he had seemed more surprised when she had spoken. It would have allowed her to feel that his confidence in her fidelity was absolute and therefore—the logic was his—she would have felt flattered. When a young woman has secretly promised eventually to marry, and in the meantime to love, a certain man, and when in the cool of the evening of a delightful day and a tranquillising dinner she confesses to him that the keeping of the “meantime” clause in her compact subjects her to a great strain, the man should of course seem greatly surprised. If he were to seem otherwise, he would in effect be saying to the girl, “I took it for granted that the strain upon you would be great.”
He could not accuse himself of any deficiency of cleverness in his attitude towards her after she had spoken that surprising sentence. He knew that there was a proper amount of feeling in the way he breathed a sibilant “H’sh—h’sh!” while turning wondering eyes upon her—their expression of surprise being not without a certain element of pain.
“H’sh—for heaven’s sake—my dearest! Oh, Josephine! But... ah, you cannot mean that—that...”
He reflected now that those jerked-out words—those unfinished sentences could scarcely have been surpassed in effect. He hoped that she felt that the hand which he had then laid upon hers, was trembling. He had meant that it should tremble. And yet now when he came to think over it, he was not quite sure that his hand should have trembled. It was just possible that a girl after speaking as she had spoken, would have been more impressed by a thoroughly firm hand touching hers—a hand whose firmness would have given her confidence, compelling her to realise the confidence which he had—well, in himself.
(He was certainly a man of exquisite judgment in subtle shades of expression.)
She had, however, not withdrawn her hand for some seconds—several seconds: the dusk had cast its friendly and fascinating shade over them: the seeming incaution of his attitude was purely imaginary. No one could see the direction taken by his hand or hers.
“I tell you, it is the truth,” she had said, withdrawing her hand. “It is a great strain that you have put upon me, Ernest. I sometimes feel like a criminal—exactly like a criminal—in the presence of my father and my mother.”
“Ah, I thought that you saw with my eyes,” he said, and the pained expression in his voice increased. “I thought that we agreed that it would be madness—your father—he would never give his consent—you yourself said so.”
“I said so—I admit; but—please don’t think that I want to—to—break it off—oh, no; I only mean to say that—that—well, I have said all that I mean to say—it is a great strain upon me and I sometimes feel very miserable about it. You can understand that it should be so, Ernest.”
“I can understand, dearest—heaven knows that I feel how——”
“I don’t know how I ever came to agree to—to all that you put upon me—I really don’t.” She had actually interrupted him with her vehemence. It seemed as if she had not heard that he had begun to speak.
And her eyes were turned, he could see, in the direction of Pierce Winwood—the man who had sat beside her at dinner and who was now sitting beside Amber Severn.
“You agreed to my suggestion because—well, because you knew what you still know—that is, that you loved a man whose hope it is to become worthy of you, Josephine. I admit that I had no right to ask you to listen to me—to hear me tell you that I loved you—when I had nothing to offer you—nothing but years of waiting—years of struggle—years of hope. And now... Josephine, do you wish to be released from your part in the compact which we made a year ago?”
“No, no; I do not wish to be released. What, can it be possible that you have so misunderstood me—that you fancy I am the sort of woman who does not know her own mind—her own heart from one day to another?”
“I know that you are steadfastness itself—only—if I have placed you in an equivocal position—if you feel that the years of waiting... what I feel exactly, my dearest, is that it would be better for both of us to separate now than for——”
“You cannot understand much of my nature if you think for a moment that, after giving you my promise, I would ask you to free me from all that the giving of that promise entailed. But I was thinking that it might be better for us to be frank.”
