Mrs. Davenant hesitated a moment.
“You wouldn’t stop to dinner, if I asked you,” she said, with a faint smile.
Una’s heart gave a great leap.
“Try me,” said Jack. “Yes, I’ll stay. Now don’t look frightened and disappointed, or I’ll go.”
Mrs. Davenant rose, with her rare laugh.
“I must go and tell them,” she said, “or you’d be starved,” and she left the room.
Jack went and stood beside the silent, motionless figure and looked down at her with infinite yearning and infinite sorrow. He had come resolved to tell her the truth and to bid her to forget him.
“Una,” he said, in a low voice.
She raised her eyes, and in an instant his grand resolution, built up with such care for the last two days, crumbled into dust. With something like a groan he was on his knee and caught her to his breast.
For a moment she resigned herself to the exquisite joy of his embrace, and with downcast eyes drooped beneath his passionate kisses, then with an effort she regained possession of the soul which had slipped from her into his, as it were, and gently disengaged herself.