If I ran to the window between the towers I could see! No, I wouldn't; I couldn't. I should scream—or faint—or do something else idiotic, if I saw Jim Beckett getting out of the car, and his mother flying to meet him. I had never felt like this in my whole life—not in any suspense, not in any danger.
Instinctively I walked as far from the window as I could. I sought sanctuary under Brian's cathedral picture—the picture that had introduced me to Jim. Yes, sanctuary I sought, for in that room my brother's work was my one excuse to intrude!
By this time the car must have arrived. The front door must have flown open in welcome. Now Mother Beckett must be crying tears of joy in the arms of her son, Father Beckett gazing at the blessed sight, speechless with ecstasy!
What should I be doing at this moment, if I had yielded to their wish and stopped downstairs with them? Just how far would Jim have gone in keeping up the tragic farce? Would he have kissed me? Would he——?
The vision was so blazing bright that I covered my eyes to shut it out. Not that I hated it. Oh no, I loved it too well!
So, for a while, I stood, my hands pressed over my eyes, my ears strained to catch distant sounds—yet wishing not to hear. Suddenly, close by, there came the click of a latch. My hands dropped like broken clock weights. I opened my eyes. Jim Beckett was in the room, and the door was shut.
CHAPTER XXXIII
I stared, fascinated. Here was Jim-of-the-rose-arbour, and a new Jim-of-the-war—a browner, thinner, sterner Jim, a Jim that looked at me with a look I could not read. It may have been cruel, but it was not cold, and it pierced like a hot sword-blade through my flesh into my soul.
"You—after all!" he said. The remembered voice I had so often heard in dreams, struck on my nerves like a hand on the strings of a harp. I felt the vibration thrill through me.