"I want to continue being friends," she said. "I've grown to look on you as a chum. That's how I've always thought of you. I want to be friends--and to put this other thing out of my thoughts."

"Yes," he agreed. "We'll wipe that out. I made a mistake. You know, dear,"--he felt for her hand and found it and held it tightly,--"I think you are the sweetest girl in the world. I'll do anything for you. For the present I'm feeling a bit sore, and just for a little while will keep in the background. When I turn up again I'll be over the worst of it, and you needn't fear that I shall make a fool of myself. We'll take things up where we dropped them."

His defeat staggered Sinclair. He had been so sure that his luck was in, so confident of the girl's affection, and unsuspicious of a possible rival. He knew of no one with whom she was on terms of particular intimacy. It never entered his thoughts to a.s.sociate Hallam with her in any way. He had not seen the development of that acquaintance. He would have disapproved if he had. His naturally healthy mind held only contempt for such weakness as Hallam's. He had summed up the man briefly as a waster, and so disposed of him. That the man he despised would one day have to be reckoned with, that he stood already in his life, a menace to his happiness, an adverse influence, he was wholly unaware. It was as well for his peace of mind that he remained in ignorance for long after she had refused him of his rival's ident.i.ty. A rival who did not materialise left room for a tiny gleam of hope in his heart.

"We'd better get back," he said, and rose from the seat. The beauty of the night held no longer any attraction for him.

"I want to go home," she said, rising also. "I'm tired, and--I want to go home."

He took her back to the hall and waited while she fetched her cloak.

She came out after a brief while, white faced and pensive, with a look in her eyes as though she had been crying and had dashed the tears hastily away.

He drew her hand through his arm and went with her out into the warm, still night, along the deserted streets, up White's Road, traversing the intervening byways to her own road almost in silence. At her door he said good-night, and was turning away when she stopped him. Her heart ached with pity for the sadness in his eyes.

"George, I'm sorry," she whispered, and tugged at his sleeve.

"That's all right," he answered, breaking away from her.

His voice sounded husky and a little gruff; he could not trust himself to say more. She drew back, feeling troubled and inadequate, and stood on the doorstep looking after him wistfully while he hurried down the road in the moonlight, turned a corner and went out of her sight. She had an impulse to run after him: she felt that she must say something, do something, anything, to drive the pain and disappointment from his look; it hurt her to let him go like that. But on reflection she knew that she could do nothing; she must let him go.

She opened the door and went dejectedly inside and shut it quickly and turned the key in the lock. Softly she crept upstairs to her room. The blind was not drawn and the moonlight streamed in through the open window and made any other illumination unnecessary.

She seated herself on the side of the bed and stared out at the black shadow of the tree with its cl.u.s.ters of blossoms showing palely in the white light. The household she supposed was asleep; everything was very still and quiet. In the distance a dog barked incessantly: there was no other sound to disturb the quiet of the night.

And then suddenly her door opened softly, and Rose came in in her nightdress, and stood looking in sleepy surprise at the motionless figure seated on the bed. She advanced to the bed and sat down beside the girl and started a whispered conversation.

"I heard you come in," she said. "Jim's asleep. Have you had a good time? Why don't you get to bed?"

"I forgot," Esme said, and began to unfasten her dress. Rose became actively helpful.

"You are tired," she said. "What's the matter, dear?" She took the girl's face between her hands and scrutinised it closely. "Esme, what has happened? I wish you'd confide in me more."

The gentle reproach in her sister's voice, acting on her overwrought nerves, caused the tears, so near the surface, to overflow. She dropped her face on to Rose's shoulder and wept softly.

"Did George say anything to you to-night?" Rose asked, feeling increasingly surprised. She had not wept when Jim proposed to her. She remembered quite vividly that she had felt elated and very excited. She had wanted to speak of it, to tell people. She could not fathom Esme's mood.

"Is that the trouble, little goose?" she asked. "I knew--we all knew-- he meant to propose."

Whereupon Esme lifted her face and turned her tear-wet eyes on the speaker in wide amaze.

"You knew!" she said. "Well, I didn't. I wish I had known. I thought he was just a pal."

"A pal makes a good husband," Rose said thoughtfully, with the first glimmer of doubt in her mind as to what answer her sister had returned.

"It's all right, isn't it?"

"It's all wrong," Esme answered ruefully, and dabbed at her eyes,--"just as wrong as it can be. He's hurt; and I hate hurting him. I like him so well. But I don't love him, Rose."

"You don't mean that you refused him?"

"Of course I mean that. I couldn't marry George."

"Why not?" Rose inquired blankly. When no response came to her question, she caught her sister's arm and turned her towards her and looked her steadily in the eyes.

"Tell me," she said quietly, "what there is between you and Paul Hallam?

You've changed since you knew him. You are more reserved, and you've lost your high spirits. Who is Paul Hallam? And why does he write to you? What is he to you?"

"He is just a friend," Esme answered.

"You love him," Rose said. "Do you think I am so dense as not to have discovered that? You can trust me. I've not let Jim guess that I know who your correspondent is. I've kept your counsel all the time; it's your affair. But I think you might tell me."

Esme made a gesture that was at once a protest and an appeal. She sat straighter, with her hands locked together in her lap, and stared out at the moonlight unseeingly.

"I'd tell you if there was anything to tell," she said. "There isn't.

There has never been any talk of love between us ever. We are just good friends."

"But you love him?" Rose persisted.

"Yes, I love him with all my heart. If I never see him again I will go on loving him for the rest of my life."

In face of this Rose found nothing to say. The situation had got beyond her. She felt increasingly curious. She wanted to know more about this man; but Esme's manner baffled her. It was very evident that the subject was distressing to the girl. There was something behind all this of which she was in ignorance and which she felt she ought to be told. She put one or two leading questions, but all she elicited was the fact that Hallam was a man of independent means and no fixed abode.

That struck Rose as significant. If no duties engrossed him it was odd that he should be satisfied to communicate with the girl only by post.

If he were sufficiently interested in her to keep up a correspondence, why did he never come to see her?

"I would advise you to put Paul Hallam out of your thoughts," she said, as an outcome of these reflections.

Then she kissed the girl, and got off the bed, and stood hesitating between the bed and the door, sleepy, yet reluctant to leave her sister alone.

"I hoped when I came in you would have a different story to tell me,"

she added. "Don't waste your life, thinking of a man who doesn't care enough to want to come and see you. George is honest, and he loves you.

It's a pity to throw away a really good chance of happiness."

"To marry a man when you love another would not bring happiness," Esme said, facing her sister in the moonlight, half undressed, and with her hair falling about her shoulders and shading her face. "And it wouldn't be fair to George."

"I expect George, like most people, would prefer half a loaf to no bread," Rose answered. She opened the door. "Good-night, dear," she said softly. "You go to sleep, and don't bother your head about any of them. Men aren't worth half the tears women waste on them."

She returned to her own room, and stood for a moment or so looking thoughtfully at the sleeping face of her husband, as he lay on his back with arms spread wide across the bed, and a faint smile touched her lips.

"It is all beauty and romance till we marry you," she mused. "Then we discover that our demi-G.o.ds are just mere men. I wonder whether I would have wept over you in the old days? ... I didn't anyway."

With which she got into bed and fell asleep.

But Esme did not sleep. She lay awake in the hot stuffy darkness of her little room, which the kitchen stove abetted the sun in keeping hot by day, while the warm slates of the too adjacent roof prevented any appreciable decrease in temperature during the night--lay awake with her mind filled with the thought of one man, and her imagination afire with the memory of splashes of moonlight on a heaving ma.s.s of water that stretched away endlessly and laved the moonlit, rock-strewn beach of a little bay along the coast. Then, with the dawn, she fell asleep and dreamed of the moonlight and of Paul Hallam.

Book 2--CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

From dreaming of Hallam at night and thinking of him in the daytime, Esme arrived at a stage of almost incredible longing to see him again.

Letters did not satisfy her. She wanted to hear his voice speaking to her, wanted to feel his presence, wanted, above all, to discover whether the months had changed him, and if the lapse of time had decreased his kindly feeling for her in any way. His letters no longer referred to the possibility of meeting: they became more formal in tone as time went by.

Soon after her tennis victory he wrote congratulating her on the event.