She persisted in her affected disregard--a poor sort of performance--of the meaning in his voice; asked:

"How have you painted her--me?"

"Unsophisticated, ingenuous, frank, guileless. She comes into the life of a man who has lived away from women, who has never believed in them, never wanted to. She makes the man see the error of his ways; leads him out of the darkness and blackness of his night into the brightness of her day. She becomes his sun."

His words, the manner of their utterance, made her bosom rise and fall.

The deep earnestness in his voice would have moved a much harder heart than hers.

"And he?"

His eyes lighted up as, in reply to that question, he began a sort of description of himself.

"He thanks G.o.d for the light! Lives! Lives! Sees things in life he never saw before. She has thrown a searchlight on the barrenness of his solitude: shown him its poverty. He realizes that it is not good for man to live alone."

An onlooker just then would have imagined her sole object in life to be the boring of a hole in the tarred path. She was watching her toe at work with an engrossment of the most, apparently, intense kind.

"And all this--these ideas--were born of my--our--chance meetings?"

"Yes! My work became easier; there was no labour. Your face was as a book to me; an open book. I just seemed to copy from it what was written there. But as for chance--who can say? Chance is but unseen direction."

The caress in his voice made itself felt. Ignoring the latter part of his speech she made hurried reply:

"And you read all this in my face? My face which contradicts my hand so?"

So earnest was he, that he grew almost petulant over the wilful misunderstanding, her changing of the subject; said:

"Let the reading of the hand go. I am content with the face."

Looking up, she realized that his eager eyes were fixed earnestly on her. Saw in them the smouldering fire waiting for the smallest draught to lick it into flame.

"Are you reading it now? Don't you know"--with a nervous little laugh--"that it is very rude to stare so?"

He felt reminded of the action of an engine's piston: his heart was pumping so furiously.

"Don't," he urged. "Please don't say so. It would wipe out half the happiness of your presence if----"

That eagerness of his must be checked! There was no knowing how far it would lead! She stepped behind the lattice of conventionality.

"It is growing late." She was on her feet; used the interview terminator again. "We must be returning."

He drew in his breath; was so afraid. Struggled in vain to control his rebellious pulse; fancied he had gone too far. Tried to retrace his steps and found--as most of us do--walking backwards gracefully to be a matter difficult of performance.

"I have not offended you by speaking as I have done, the truth?"

"Offended!"

She spoke shortly. Just repeated his word, not being in a mood for the making of long speeches; added:

"Oh no!... Now let us be going."

They went. Homeward bound the conversation perched on stilts; seemed artificially out of reach; a reserve had sprung up between them. Both were making obvious efforts to be natural. Masters was appreciative of the fact that his own were a sickly failure.

At her gate she a.s.sumed merriment; a transparent, fraudulent kind of mirth. Said laughingly, one hand on the latch, the other ready to place in his:

"And now, Mr. Prophet, what of the morrow? Think you will it hail, rain, wind or snow?"

It was not infectious, that merriment of hers. She had fallen on the first subject in Valapuk: the weather. Staple of English intercourse, how many can deny it a debt of grat.i.tude? Common ground--a national heritage whereon we can disport ourselves at ease.

"Rain, I am afraid." He looked round. "Those banks of clouds augur badly."

"You are not a comforting sort of prophet! a.s.sumption of your correctness means confinement to the house all day."

"Yes."

He looked at her as he answered. The glance made it hardly a laconic reply.... She stretched out her hand. With the light in her forget-me-not eyes full on, said:

"Good-bye."

Taking her hand--his retention of it was for a period considerably longer than is considered quite good form in Mayfair--he asked:

"If a wet day--to-morrow, you know--I shall not see you at all, shall I?"

Those eloquent lashes of hers helped her speech as she replied:

"It may clear in the evening, as it did to-day. I may not take Gracie out in the damp. But, unless it rains, I shall take my own walk in the evening."

Even a smaller mercy would have made him thankful. He enquired eagerly:

"At eight o'clock?"

The fringes lifted, giving him what he extravagantly labelled a glimpse of Heaven. In the moonlight he saw all the glory of her eyes, as she answered:

"Yes."

He had never thought it possible that room could be found for so delightful a tone in a woman's voice, as was in Miss Mivvins' utterance of that one-syllable word.

"If you should find me walking on the parade at that time," he suggested, "you--you would not be displeased?"

She looked at him again. What she read prompted her to think him deserving some little reward. Casting her eyes down to her hand, which he was still holding, and lowering her voice too, till it was almost a half-whisper, she said:

"What--what would you think if I said that----"

She hesitated--stopped. Quite eagerly he endeavoured to help her on; interjected:

"Yes?"

"That I might be disappointed if I did not see you?"