Neither responsibility could in fact have been fixed upon him, and just now, at all events, he was only a pleasant, weather- washed, wind-battered Briton, who brought in from a struggle with the elements that he appeared quite to have enjoyed a certain amount of unremoved mud and an unusual quantity of easy expression.
It was exactly the silence ensuing on the retreat of the servant and the closed door that marked between him and his hostess the degree of this ease. They met, as it were, twice: the first time while the servant was there and the second as soon as he was not. The difference was great between the two encounters, though we must add in justice to the second that its marks were at first mainly negative.
This communion consisted only in their having drawn each other for a minute as close as possible as possible, that is, with no help but the full clasp of hands. Thus they were mutually held, and the closeness was at any rate such that, for a little, though it took account of dangers, it did without words. When words presently came the pair were talking by the fire, and she had rung for tea. He had by this time asked if the note he had despatched to her after breakfast had been safely delivered.
“Yes, before luncheon. But I`m always in a state when except for some extraordinary reason you send such things by hand. I knew, without it, that you had come. It never fails. I`m sure when you`re there I`m sure when you`re not.”
He wiped, before the glass, his wet mustache. “I see. But this morning I had an impulse.”
“It was beautiful. But they make me as uneasy, sometimes, your impulses, as if they were calculations; make me wonder what you have in reserve.”
“Because when small children are too awfully good they die? Well, I am a small child compared to you but I`m not dead yet. I cling to life.”
He had covered her with his smile, but she continued grave. “I`m not half so much afraid when you`re nasty.”
“Thank you! What then did you do,” he asked, “with my note?”
Dressing Table
“You deserve that I should have spread it out on my dressing-table or left it, better still, in Maud Blessingbourne`s room.”
He wondered while he laughed. “Oh, but what does she de-serve?”
It was her gravity that continued to answer. “Ye& it would probably kill her.”
“She believes so in you?”
“She believes so in you. So don`t be too nice to her.”
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