"I know," he answered. Then there was silence between them.
Lady Gerardine had come to Major Bethune in the little library where he spent some hours each morning over his work. These last days she had shown an unaccountable distaste to his presence in the attic room. And he, studying her now, thought that, in this short week of his visit, she had altered and wasted; that the bloom had faded on her cheek, and that cheek itself was faintly hollowed. He had been poring over some old maps of the Baroghil district, pipe in mouth, when she entered upon him. And at sight of her, he had risen to his feet, putting aside the briar with a muttered apology. But she, arrested in her advance, had stood inhaling the vapour of his tobacco, her lips parted with a quivering that was half smile, half pain.
"I like it," she had said dreamily. "It brings me back."
Awkward he nearly always felt himself before her, never more so than at these moments of self-betrayal on her part, when every glimpse of her innermost feeling contradicted the hard facts of her life. He stood stiffly, not taking up his pipe at her bidding. Then, pulling herself together, she had advanced again, ceremoniously requesting him to be seated. She had only come to bring him another note, which she had omitted to join to those annals of Harry English's life up to their marriage, already in his hands.
He had just glanced at it and flicked it on one side, and then at the expectancy of his silence, she had grown pale. There could be no turning back, she did not ask it, scarcely hoped for it. But, O God, if she might wait a little longer!
She sank into the worn leather armchair. It was a small room, lined with volumes, and the air was full of the smell of ancient bindings, ancient paper and print; that good smell of books, so grateful to the nostrils of one who loves them, mingled with the pungency of Bethune's tobacco.
The wild orchard came quite close to the window and across the panes, under an impatient wind, the empty boughs went ceaselessly up and down like withered arms upon some perpetual useless signalling. To Rosamond they seemed spectres of past summers, waving her back from their own hopeless winter. The room was warm and rosy with firelight, but in her heart she felt cold. And Major Bethune sat waiting.
"I only had one or two letters from him," she faltered at last; "and then came the silence." Her lovely mouth twitched with pain; Raymond Bethune turned his eyes away from her face.
"He joined us at Gilgit," he said, staring out at the frantic boughs. "I remember how he looked, as he jogged in, towards evening, with his fellows—white with dust, his very hair powdered."
She clasped her hands; the tension slightly relaxed.