Among the lilacs a robin was singing his delicate and bold welcome to autumn, and over the window a branch of red roses nodded persistently and rhythmically in a draught of wind. Lawrence stood looking out into the garden of which he saw nothing, and Isabel, watching him, felt tears coming into her own eyes, the tears of that unnerving pity which a woman feels for the man she loves, when she has never before seen him in defeat or depression. No wonder he thought her fickle! How could he read what was dark to her?
Isabel had not deliberately altered her mind in the night. She had lain down free and risen up bond, waking from sound sleep, the sleep of a child, to find that the silent inner Court of Appeal had reversed her verdict while she slept. Her first thought had been, "I'm going to marry Lawrence!" For he needed her: that was what she had forgotten last night: by his parade of wealth he had defeated his own ends, but, her first anger over, she had realized that one should no more refuse a man for being rich, than accept him. Far other were the grounds on which that decision had to be made. It had been pity that carried Isabel away. Perhaps in any case she could not have held out for long.
Did she expect to be happy? Scarcely, for she did not trust him enough to be frank with him. Sophisticated men soon tire of candid women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested in his arms. Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf: ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them, for Hyde had none. Within the limits of his code of honour he would simply do as he liked. And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red roses and sunshine and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.
But there should be compromise: one must not—one need not—cheat him of the pride of his manhood. Isabel's heart ached for her lover. She could not defend herself against him any longer, and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, "You may yield now. Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well as unkind."
She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe had vanished. His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he began to taste the sweetness of his victory. "Have I won you?" he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy's in his first passion. "You won't fail me?"
"Oh never! never!"
"You have the most beautiful eyes in the world. I believe one reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded me of yours. I can't stand it when he looks at me under your eyelashes. I always want to say 'Here take it Val.'"
"Take what?"
"Anything he wants. I'm going to extend a protecting wing over my young brother-in-law. He shall not, no, I swear he shall not come to grief. I can't stand it, he's too like you. When did you first fall in love with me?"
"When did you?"