Mrs. Dallas’s sleepy eyes rested on him, and her delicate nostrils, slightly dilating, might have been, though without excitement, inhaling a familiar incense.
“I do love you so much,” said Rupert in a trembling voice, gazing at her; “I do love you. You understand what I mean. You know me now and you couldn’t misunderstand. I want to serve you. I want to help you. I want you to lean on me and trust me—to let me be everything to you that I can.” And as he spoke he stretched out his hand and laid it on her hands folded in her lap.
Mrs. Dallas let it lie there, and she looked back at him, not moved, apparently, but a little grave. “No, I don’t think I misunderstand your feeling,” she said after a moment. “Of course I’ve seen it plainly.”
“Yes, yes, I knew you did.—And that you accepted it,—dearest—loveliest—best.” He had drawn her hand to him now and he pressed his lips upon it. And as he kissed Mrs. Dallas’s hand, as that imagined happiness was consummated, he felt his mind cloud suddenly, as if in a cloud of fragrance, and, thought sinking away from him, he knew only an aching sweetness, the white, warm hand against his lips, the darkness of the glimmering room near by, and the scent of the carnations, exhaling their spices in the hot sunshine. Closing his eyes, he breathed quickly. And above him, a little paler, Mrs. Dallas, for a moment, as if with the conscious acceptance of a familiar ritual, also closed her eyes and breathed in, with the scent of her carnations, the immortal fragrance of the youth and passion that, to her, could soon no longer come. “Dear boy!” she murmured.
They heard the step of Colonel Dallas descending from the upper lawn. Rupert drew back sharply; Mrs. Dallas softly replaced her hand upon the other in her lap. Her husband appeared, and he looked very fretful.
“The sun is quite tropical. It’s impossible to play in it. We don’t get a breath of air down in this hole.” He took out his watch—Colonel Dallas was always taking out his watch. “What time is tea?” he asked.
“At five o’clock, as usual, I suppose,” said his wife.
“It’s only just past four,” said the colonel, with the bitterly resigned air of one who loses a wager he had hardly hoped to win. “I shall go to the Trotters'. It’s better than being baked in this oven. Their lawn is shaded at all events.” He spoke as if there had been some attempt to dissuade him from the alleviations of the Trotters' lawn.
“I don’t know why you didn’t go half an hour ago,” said his wife. “You’ve so often discovered that the sun is tropical on the upper lawn at this hour.” And as the colonel moved off she added, “Just tell them that I’ll have lemon-squash instead of tea, will you?”
It was a rather absurd little interlude; yet it had its point, its appropriateness; it fitted in with those thoughts of succour, and Rupert tried, now, to recover them, saying, after the gate had closed upon the colonel and keeping still at his little distance, “Are you very unhappy?”