“You didn’t know. Renny”—her pretty eyes were struggling with tears again, and her poor face looked up into mine, entreating me not to take base advantage of her surrender—“if I kissed you as you kissed me once do you think it would come?”
“It isn’t right for us to try, dear.”
Thank heaven my manhood stood the test—the inference so pathetic in its childish simplicity.
“Come,” I said, “we will go back now. I want time to think it all over by myself. You mustn’t refer to it again, Dolly, in any way—not till I can see you by and by alone.”
She said, “Yes, Renny,” humbly. Her very manner toward me was marked by a touching obedience.
We caught our train and sped back to London in a crowded compartment, so that the present embarrassment of tete-a-tete was spared us. At the terminus we parted gently and gravely on both sides and went each of us home.
Duke was in bed when I reached our lodgings, and for that I was grateful, for I felt far too upset and confused to relish the idea of a talk with him. Indeed, since the moment Dolly had confessed to me, he had hung strangely in the background of my thoughts. I felt a comfortless dawning of apprehension that all along he had been keen witness of the silent little drama in which unconsciously I was an actor—had sat in the pit and sorrowfully gauged the purport of the part I played.
I went to bed, but never to sleep. All night long I tossed, struggling to unravel the disorder in my brain. I could think out nothing collectively—warp and woof were inextricably confused.
At length, in despair, I rose, redressed and went outside. The church clocks clanged six as I stepped onto the pavement; there was a fresh-blown coolness in the dusky air; the streets stretched emptily to the dawn.
In the very contact with space, the tumult in my head settled down into some manner of order, and I was able to face, after a fashion, the problem before me.