Still, exposed or guarded, I had my life to live, and I was no longer disposed in the matter of this intimacy with Miss Levey to do nothing at all. Therefore, when I returned from seeing Aunt Angela away and found Evie still in the dining-room, I took my risk.

She ought to have been in bed; but instead she had drawn up a chair to an old bureau, and was quite unnecessarily fiddling with old papers and letters and nondescript objects put away in the nest of drawers. She looked up as I entered, and the vivacity with which she spoke seemed a little forced.

"Fancy, Jeff!" she exclaimed, her fingers in the leaves of some old twopenny notebook or other, "I can actually read my old shorthand yet! I should have thought I'd forgotten all about it, after all this time!

I'll bet I could read as quickly as you!"

I stirred the dying fire. "Isn't it time you were in bed?" I said.

"Oh, just let me tidy this--I sha'n't be many minutes."

And while I picked up an evening paper she went on with her pottering about the bureau.

But the light sound of the moving paper began to get a little on my nerves. It does that sometimes. I suppose it's like some people fidgeting if there is a cat in the room. And presently I noticed that when she supposed me to be busily reading the rustling stopped. It was no good going on like this; the sooner I came to the point and said what I had to say, the better. I thought for a moment, and then put down my newspaper.

"Evie----" I said.

"Yes, dear?" she said brightly....

I put it with perfect gentleness. Suddenness and sharpness also are among the trifles of life I had had to forego. When I had finished, she did not seem surprised. She only nodded once or twice.

"I see," she said slowly. "Well, Miriam--I mean Miss Levey, if you wish it, dear----"

"No, darling; I don't know that I go as far as that. I was only speaking of these broadcast intimacies."

"Miriam, then--Miriam said you would object----"

"Well, I never denied Miriam a certain acuteness."

But she shook her head. For a minute or two I had been sure that I was not the only one who had something to say. When she did go on, it was at first haltingly, and then with just such a little setting of her resolution as she had used when, years ago, a sweet and awkward flapper, she had complimented me on my spurious engagement to the lady whose name she now suddenly mentioned.

"I don't mean to object to--to what you've been saying, Jeff. I mean--I mean object to this about poor Kitty. I know," she quickened, as if to forestall a remark, "that we haven't said anything about it--you and I--for a long time--but"--once more the rush--"I've felt you've known what I've been thinking, Jeff----"

I gained a little time. "But I wasn't speaking of Kitty Windus, dear," I said. "It was something quite different."

Then, before her look of trouble and appeal, I ceased my pretence.

"Very well, dearest," I sighed. "But tell me one thing. If I hadn't said anything to-night, _you_ wanted to say something."

"Yes," she mumbled in a low voice to the twopenny notebook.

"Is that what Miss Levey meant when she said 'Don't forget' an hour or two ago?"

"Yes."

"You hadn't to forget to--to bring something, whatever it is, up about Kitty?"

Her silence told me that that was so. Then, slowly:

"And why should she think I should object to that?" I asked.

Evie's manner changed with almost electrical suddenness. She thrust her hands into her lap, straightened her back, and spoke almost victoriously.

"_There!_ I _knew_! I told her so!" she triumphed. "'Miriam,' I said, 'you're _quite_ wrong in thinking that--that----'"

"In thinking there's something to be ashamed of in an old engagement you've changed your mind about?" I suggested gently.

"Yes!" she exulted. "I said to her, 'Jeff wouldn't in the _least_ mind my going to see her if I wanted'--and you wouldn't, would you, Jeff?"

"No," I said quickly. I said it quickly lest I should not say it at all.

Then I qualified. "No.... One shrinks from pain, that's all, either enduring it or giving it."

"Giving Kitty pain?"

"Well, does Miss Levey think it would be pleasant to her--or is she merely willing to hurt her if she can hurt me too?"

"But--but--Miriam says she would really be awfully pleased--Kitty would--and I'm sure you're wrong, Jeff, about things like that lasting for years and years! They don't. I----" She checked herself.

But whether it was the check or what not that made the difference, all at once she started forward from the bureau and sank on her knees at my side. She herself put one of my hands about her waist, as if to compel it to a caress, and stroked her cheek against the other. The words she murmured were disjointed enough, but her tone was, oh, so eloquent....

"Dear, dear!" she besought me. "Miriam _was_ wrong, wasn't she? Not that I care in the very least, only I've been, oh, so wretched, thinking there was something between us! I don't want to see her--Miriam--nor Kitty--very much--but it was so lonely--till Jack came--and there isn't anything now, is there, Jeff? I know there has been--but it's gone now, hasn't it?... Great strong hand!" She moistened it with her breathing.... "But it _is_ all right now, isn't it, Jeff?"

I did not know why, all in a moment, I found myself remembering that curious prophecy of Louie Causton's: "I think you'll find that sooner or later you've got to tell her." Perhaps it was that in that moment I had my first glimpse of what Louie had really meant. Already it was useless to say there had been no slight shadow between us; Evie, who knew few things, at least knew that; but I had not dared to acknowledge it for fear of worse.... Yes, I began to see; and with my seeing I again grew hot and rebellious.

Why, since the act I had committed had had at least as much of good as of evil in it, should I be hounded thus? Why should trifles accrete to an ancient and hideous memory until it became a corporeal, living, malignant thing? Why should that commonest of experiences, an old rescinded engagement, not, in my case also, be what Evie thought it was--a wound made whole again, or at any rate so hardened over that it could be touched without provoking a sharp scream of pain? It was intolerable....

Oh, never, if you can help it, live in a world without trifles!

Evie, at my knee, continued to supplicate. "Oh, darling, I've so, _so_ wanted it to be like it was at first! Do you remember--in Kensington Gardens, sweetheart?"

And she turned up those loveliest eyes I ever looked into....

It had been in Kensington Gardens, early on a September evening, that I had asked her to marry me. Our chairs had been so drawn back into the clump of laurels that the man with the tickets had not noticed us, and we ourselves had seen little but a distant corner of the Palace, and, forty yards away across the gra.s.s, a dead ash gilded by the setting sun.

At the F.B.C. Pepper had just begun to single out his new Jun. Ex. Con.

for special jobs, and as a matter of fact I had had a small rise of salary that very week. Little enough it had been; certainly not enough to warrant me in exchanging our footing--one of increasingly frequent calls at Woburn Place and goodness knows how much lingering in likely streets on the chance of a sight of her--for a more explicit relation; but--well, as I say, I had thrust all else recklessly aside, and that evening had asked her to marry me.

There are some things that one must needs exaggerate if one is to speak of them at all; so if I say that at first it had seemed to her that my proposal was merely that two bruised spirits should thenceforward make the best of things together, I must leave you to discount that. I don't think she had known clearly what she had felt. The hand I had taken had trembled a little, and in the great dark eyes that had looked steadfastly away to the dead ash I had fancied I had discerned the beginnings of a refusal--a refusal out of mere customariness and a settled acceptance of our former relation. I had fancied that----

But even to the trembler a tremble may speak truer than words, and she had trembled and become conscious of it. For the first time it had occurred to her, sweet soul, that we had been all unconsciously pa.s.sing from friends.h.i.+p to love, and were now making the discovery together. She had not known that I had never had anything but love from which to pa.s.s; and another access of trembling had taken her....

"The last evening you and I had a walk together," she had whispered at last, her eyes still gravely on the pale ash, "we--we didn't think of--this."

(Did I mention that during all the time I had known her we had only spent one other evening out of doors alone together? It had been more than four years before, and we had heard a nightingale sing on Wimbledon Common.)

I had not answered. To allow the memory of that other evening to repossess her had seemed the best answer to make. For though we pack our hearts daily with the stuff of life, only time shows us which is the tinsel we have coveted, and which the lump we have not known to be gold.

More than four years had pa.s.sed; presently those four years would have opened her eyes to differences too; and so I had waited....

And, if not yet discovered, at any rate sudden and troubling new questions had crowded into her eyes as I had watched. Another silence of many minutes, then: