A table on which lay books and photographs stood at hand. Geoffrey took up a photograph of the Gouliots, Sark—some glistening boulders, a fishing-net stretched on the shingle, a break of wave. How indelibly the bit of sun-etching transferred itself to his brain’s tablets! How often, in dull future hours, would those boulders, that break of wave, stand out in crisp relief before Geff’s memory?
‘Yes.’ He spoke in a key that only Marjorie could hear. ‘For just five minutes I should like to claim you. When I was at Tintajeux the day before yesterday, I was atrociously churlish to you, Miss Bartrand. I have been brought to see it since. Will you accept my apology?’
Geoffrey had ‘been brought to see’ his churlishness! Then he held at nought her offer of truce—the word it had cost her pride so dear to write! He offered her this cutting rejoinder, an apology!
‘You are hard upon me, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ There was a piteous deprecation in her voice. ‘When you were my master, I used to think you severe; but that was the worst. I believed you to be human.’
‘I am afraid I am very human.’ Geoffrey took up a fresh photograph; he examined it at a curiously shortsighted focus. ‘So human,’ he added, softening, ‘that I have not altogether given up the hope of your some day writing to me.’
‘A formal, set letter, do you mean?’
‘A letter,’ said Geff, very low, ‘in which no thought of the Tintajeux acres has place.’
For a moment her face showed one of its old bright flashes. In the world of story books it had ever been Marjorie’s pleasure to scoff at the frail impediments, arising from the necessity of a third volume, which keep true lovers apart. Should paltry reserve—the thought came upon her abruptly—should schoolgirl cowardice divide her, as though three hundred pages of ‘copy’ depended upon the quarrel, from Geoffrey?
‘I don’t know what you would have me say. I can’t see why you should be off so quick! I tried—I hoped——’