“Nobody has ever really understood me—till you came,” she said, sitting upright now beside him, the lovely colour in her cheeks delicately heightened, her eyes shining while she talked. She confided in him. She loved him. They were betrothed—this was the blissful, culminating thought that seemed to go in waves of music through him as he gazed at her. He had ceased to hear the willow-wren’s melancholy little song. And then he heard her say:
“I don’t want to live in the country, you know. You won’t mind? Of course I love it; but we can pay week-end visits, always;—you must know such heaps of nice people; friends. And we’ll travel too—I long to see the world. India doesn’t count. Only think, I’ve never been to Paris except once—on a horrid, cheap trip, for a week. We never could afford to do anything really amusing or buy any really nice things. My life has been so frightfully dull, and I do want to stretch my wings and see lots of people and entertain and go to plays, you know. I adore London. I’m sure I shall be a good hostess.”
It was as if a sword had transfixed him. He seemed to hear a great bell booming—a great London bell—Big Ben; he had always heard Big Ben from his office in Whitehall, and there had been a jangle of bells in Kensington, too, and a roar, a ceaseless roar. And he seemed to hear the words “Dangerous, dangerous.” He had been too happy.
He kept his mild, kind eyes of a pastel blue upon her, and he told himself, while he wrestled, transfixed, that she must not guess; but, as if pressed from his anguish, he heard himself murmuring helplessly, though the gentle, fixed smile held his lips, “You don’t care for my little place, then? You wouldn’t care to go on living at Meadows? It’s a nice little place, Meadows—a nice little place; we could make it very pretty, and we could have people here, as many as you wanted.”
Had a note of pleading, almost desperate, crept in unawares? He saw her calm eyes harden slightly, fixed on him. And he saw, then, tears rise in them.
“Oh! it’s so dull, so dull, down here!” she breathed. “It’s a darling little place, Meadows—of course, of course I love it. I wish we could afford to keep it, just to run down to for a quiet week-end now and then; but you couldn’t, could you? And it’s far too small for entertaining, isn’t it? And no one really smart cares to come and stay with one if one has no shooting, nothing to offer. One can really live in London—I’ve always felt that. You do care more for me than you do for Meadows?” she finished with a smile, half appealing and half challenging.
And looking into the blue eyes, blurred and enlarged, like a child’s, with their tears, he saw himself as mean and petty and selfish. He loved her, and was it only as another flower to place among his flowers, another treasure to place among his treasures, a possession of his own, without end or purpose for itself? He loved her, and, unimaginably, she loved him and would marry him. Love must know pain and sacrifice—"pain and sacrifice"—he seemed to hear himself repeating. This was a young life, with its rights to life, and it must stretch its wings.
He smiled at her and raised her hand again to his lips, saying, “Of course I care more for you than for Meadows, dear Leila. Of course we will live where you choose.”
And very radiant now, rising and smiling down upon him, Leila Pickering said, “You are a dear. I’m sure it’s best for us both; we’d get so pokey here. I know we couldn’t afford Mayfair—I wouldn’t dream of that; but I think a house in one of those little new streets near Cadogan Square would be just right for us; don’t you?”