Her voice was casual, yet there was something flame-like about her as she followed him across the room, sheltering the lighted match with closed hands, translucently scarlet, a living lamp that lit up her delicate face and laughing, passionate eyes and the duller red of her hair. And with the same flame-like restlessness she hovered about him, enjoying, a little feverishly, her brief authority.
“No, Justin—not there. Put it in the dark corner, by the hanging cupboard. Yes—oh, quite safe. And, Justin—if you fastened the curtain back—right back—here, take my scarf—he would see at once there was nothing behind it. That’s splendid. I don’t think he’ll wake though, do you? Let’s come away quietly.”
They tiptoed out of the room.
But before the lights of the landing Laura shrank oddly, like a bright sword slipping back into its sheath. Justin glanced at her more than once as they went down, and, the stairway being narrow, he made more room for them both by slipping his arm through hers. He was discovering that he did not like Laura to look tired.
Now their curiously impersonal alliance had never needed more than a handshake at rare intervals to confirm it. Such an unfamiliar gesture, unconscious as he was that it had been a caress, meant, she knew, so much from him, implied so much of intimacy and approval, that she flushed at his touch in a pang of secret delight. Yet the fear that was always upon her when she loved him most, not of him, but of untimely divergence from his standards, of unwittingly jarring his fastidious and uncertain taste, held her, now as always, passive, denying him nothing yet not daring to respond, lest an intonation, a glance, or even the little welcoming pressure on his arm, should qualify the security of their relationship.
Yet, in spite of her quiescence and his unconsciousness, they contrived to drift past the drawing-room door, and the billiard-room door, and all the allurements of the bridge table, to agree silently to a pacing up and down of the dim terrace, with its black shadows and window-pools of light, and its hedge of larkspur and lilies, and Canterbury bells that jingled hoarsely, as Laura’s skirts passing and repassing set them a-sway.
They had left time behind them in the house. The dark, quiet minutes lived and died unnoticed to the soft crunch of their feet on the dewy gravel. Justin stared abstractedly before him, and Laura, her step matching his, was filled with a sudden blessed sense of possession and forgot utterly all the doubt and oppression of the previous weeks. She felt herself, even as the plant-life about her, reviving, straightening, drawing strength from the night, and its peace was poured upon her like a precious ointment. She could even accept Justin’s silence without anxiety, without the quick rummage of her brain to reassure herself that she had amusement stored there for him should he show signs of boredom—ideas, questions, hobby-horses for his restlessness to straddle. For he was restless: through her peace she felt it stirring in him, and longed as she always did, to content it. She slackened.
“Justin—go slower. We’re disturbing the night.” She stood still and, half impatiently, he acquiesced.
“Isn’t it big? And not a star——”
He drew a deep breath.