"How soon shall you be down our way again?" His voice was thickening. She shook her head, speechless. She was afraid again now. His face altered. He was standing almost over her. She thought: "I am lost! I have let it come to this!" He was no longer a good friend.
He began to speak, in detached bits of phrases:
"I say--you know--"
"Good-bye, good-bye," she murmured anxiously. "I must go. Thanks very much."
And foolishly, she held out her hand, which he seized. He bent passionately, and kissed her like a fresh boy, like a schoolboy. And she gave back the kiss strongly, with all the profound sincerity of her nature. His agitation appeared to be extreme; but she was calm; she was divinely calm. She savoured the moment as though she had been a watcher, and not an actor in the scene. She thought, with a secret sigh of bliss: "Yes, it is real, this moment! And I have had it. Am I astonished that it has come so soon, or did I know it was coming?" Her eyes drank up the face and the hands and the gestures of her lover. She felt tired, and sat down in the office chair, and he leaned on the desk, and the walls of the cubicle folded them in, even from the inanimate scrutiny of the shop.
V
They were talking together, half-fearfully, and yet with the confidence of deep mutual trust, in the quick-gathering darkness of the cubicle. And while they were talking, Hilda, in her head, was writing a fervent letter to him: "... You see it was so sudden. I had had no chance to tell you. I did so want to tell you, but how could I? And I hadn't told anybody! I'm sure you will agree with me that it is best to tell some things as little as possible. And when you had kissed me, how could I tell you then--at once? I could not. It would have spoilt everything. Surely you understand. I know you do, because you understand everything. If I was wrong, tell me where. You don't guess how humble I am! When I think of you, I am the humblest girl you can imagine. Forgive me, if there is anything to forgive. I don't need to tell you that I have suffered."
And she kept writing the letter again and again, slightly altering the phrases so as to improve them, so as to express herself better and more honestly and more appealingly.
"I shall send you the address to-morrow," she was saying to him. "I shall write you before I go to bed, whether it's to-night or to-morrow morning." She put the fire of her love into the assurance. She smiled to entrance him, and saw on his face that he was beside himself with joy in her. She was a queen, surpassing in her prerogative a thousand elegant Janets. She smiled; she proudly straightened her shoulders (she the humblest!), and her boy was enslaved.
"I wonder what people will say," he murmured.