"I saw that," said Violet with a smile.
"Yet I never spoke."
"Your eyes, your face spoke. Oh, my dear, I watch you," and she drew in a breath. "I am a little afraid of you." She did not laugh. There was nothing provocative in her accent. She spoke with simplicity and truth, now as often, what was set down to her for a coquetry by those who disliked her. Linforth was in no doubt, however. Mistake her as he did, he judged her in this respect more truly than the worldly-wise. She had at the bottom of her heart a great fear of her lover, a fear that she might lose him, a fear that he might hold her in scorn, if he knew her only half as well as she knew herself.
"I don't want you to be afraid of me," he said, quietly. "There is no reason for it."
"You are hard to others if they come in your way," she replied, and Linforth stopped. Yes, that was true. There was his mother in the house under the Sussex Downs. He had got his way. He was on the Frontier. The Road now would surely go on. It would be a strange thing if he did not manage to get some portion of that work entrusted to his hands. He had got his way, but he had been hard, undoubtedly.
"It is quite true," he answered. "But I have had my lesson. You need not fear that I shall be anything but very gentle towards you."
"In your thoughts?" she asked quickly. "That you will be gentle in word and in deed—yes, of that I am sure. But will you think gently of me—always? That is a different thing."
"Of course," he answered with a laugh.
But Violet Oliver was in no mood lightly to be put off.
"Promise me that!" she cried in a low and most passionate voice. Her lips trembled as she pleaded; her dark eyes besought him, shining starrily. "Oh, promise that you will think of me gently—that if ever you are inclined to be hard and to judge me harshly, you will remember these two nights in the dark garden at Peshawur."