She hurt him in saying it. “You only have the knife,” he answered, and his gentleness might have reproached the sudden challenge.
“You have poison.”
“I never put it to your lips, dear.”
She saw his pain. “Oh, don’t be afraid for me,” she said. “I drink your poison, and it is a tonic, a wine, that fills me with greater ardor for the fight.”
IX
HEY were on the path that led to the deeply sunken garden gate, and they had not spoken another word while they followed it, while they stooped a little under the tangle of ivy that drooped from the stone lintel, while they went past the summer-house and on between the rows of withered plants and the empty, wintry spaces of the garden; only when they were nearly at the house, under the great pine-tree, did Eppie cheerfully surmise that they would be exactly on time for tea, and by her manner imply that tea was far more present to her thoughts than daggers or poison.
He felt that in some sense matters had been left in the lurch. He didn’t quite know where he stood for her with his disastrous darkness about him—whether she had really taken up a weapon for open warfare or whether she hadn’t wisely fallen back upon the mere pleasantness of friendly intercourse, turning her eyes away from his accompanying gloom.
He was glad to find her alone that evening after dinner when he had left the general in the smoking-room over a review and a cigar. Miss Barbara had gone early to bed, so that Eppie, in her white dress, as on the night of his arrival, had the dark brightness of the firelit room all to herself. He was glad, because the sense of uncertainty needed defining, and uncertainty, since that last moment of trembling, had been so acute that any sort of definition would be a relief.
An evening alone with her, now that they were really on the plane of mutual understanding, would put his vague fears to the test. He would learn whether they must be fled from or whether, as mere superficial tremors, tricks of the emotions, they could not be outfaced smilingly. He really didn’t want to run away, especially not until he clearly knew from what he ran.