Easter was approaching, and Pauline went to Oxford for a week to get summer clothes. When she came back, Guy found her attitude changed. She was remote, almost evasive, and at the back of her tenderest glance was now a wistful appeal that perplexed his ardour.
"I feel you don't want me to kiss you," he said reproachfully. "What has happened? Why have you come back from Oxford so cold? What has happened to you, Pauline?"
Her eyes took fire, melted into tenderness, flamed once more, and then were quenched in rising tears.
The voice in which she answered him seemed to come from another world.
"Guy, I am not cold ... I'm not cold enough...."
She flung herself away from his gesture of endearment and buried her cheeks in the cushion of the faded old settee. A wild calm had fallen upon the room as if like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm it could register a warning of the emotional tempest at hand. The books, the furniture, the very pattern of birds and daisies upon the wall stood out sharply, almost luridly it seemed: the cuckoo from the passage called the hour in notes of alarm as if a stormcock were sweeping up to cover from dangerous open country.
"What do you mean?" Guy asked. He knew that he was carrying the situation between Pauline and himself farther along than he had ever taken it since the night they met. Yet nothing could have stopped his course at this moment and, if the end should ruin his life, he would persist.
"What do you mean?" he repeated.
"Don't ask me," she sobbed. "It's cruel to ask me."
"You mean your mother...." he began.