"Yes, we went round to his studio in Grosvenor Road. Oh, my dear, such a glorious room looking out over the river right into the face of the young moon coming up over Lambeth. A jolly old Georgian house. And at the back another long low window looking out over a sea of roofs to the sunset behind the new Roman cathedral. There were lots of people there, and a man was playing that Brahms sonata your mother likes so much. Pauline, you and I simply must go and live in Chelsea or Westminster and we can come back to Plashers Mead after the most amazing adventures. You would be such a rose on a London window-sill, or would you then be a tuft of London Pride, all blushes and bravery?"
"Bravery! Why I'm frightened to death by the idea of going to live in London. Oh, Guy, I'm frightened of anything that will break into our life here."
"But, dearest, we can't stay at Wychford for ever doing nothing. Read The Statue and the Bust if you want to understand the dread that lies cold on my heart sometimes. Think how already nearly twenty months have gone by since we met, and still we are in the same position. We know each other better and we are more in love than ever, but you have all sorts of worries at the back of your mind and I have all sorts of ambitions not yet fulfilled. Michael has at least managed to make a complete ass of himself, but what have I done?"
"Your poems ... your poems," she murmured despairingly. "Are your poems really no use? Oh, Guy, that seems such a cruel thing to believe."
Guy talked airily of what much more wonderful things he was going to write, and when he asked Pauline to meet him this very midnight on the river, she had to consent, because in the thought that he appeared to be drifting out of reach of her love she felt half distraught and would have sacrificed anything to keep him by her.
The June evening seemed of a sad uniform green, for the blossom of the trees was departed and the borders were not yet marching in Midsummer array. There was always a sadness about these evenings of early June, a sadness, and sometimes a threat when the wind blew loudly among the young foliage. Those gusty eves were almost preferable to this protracted and luminous melancholy in which the sinking crescent of the moon hung scarcely more bright than ivory. The pensive beauty was too much for Pauline, who wished that she could shut out the obstinate day and read by candlelight such a book as Alice in Wonderland until it was time to go to bed. Her white fastness, rose-bloomed by sunset as she dressed for dinner, reproached her intention of abandoning its shelter to-night, and she determined that this should really be the last escapade. There was no harm in what she had done of course, as Guy assured her, and yet there was harm in behaving so traitorously toward that narrow white bed, toward pious wide-eyed Saint Ursula and Tobit's companionable angel.
The languor of the evening was heavy upon all the family: Monica was the only one who had the energy to go to her instrument. She played Chopin, and the austerity of her method made the ballades and the nocturnes more dangerously sweet. Gradually the melodies lulled most of Pauline's fears and charmed her to look forward eagerly to the velvet midnight when she with Guy beside her would float deep into such caressing glooms. After Monica had played them all into drowsiness, Pauline had to wait until the last sound had died away in the house and the illumination of the last window had faded from the bodeful night that was stroking her window with invitation to come forth.
Twelve o'clock clanged from the belfry, and Pauline opened her bedroom door to listen. She had put on her white frieze coat, for although the night was warm the wearing of such outdoor garb gave a queer kind of propriety to the whole business, and at the far end of the long corridor she saw herself in the dim candlelight mirrored like a ghost in the Venetian glass. From the heart of the house the cuckoo calling midnight a minute or two late made her draw back in alarm, and not merely in alarm, but also rather sentimentally, as if by her action she were going to offend that innocent bird of childhood. She wondered why to-night she felt so sensitive beforehand, since usually the regret had followed her action; but promising herself that to-night should indeed be the last time she would ever take this risk, she crept on tip-toe down the stairs.
In the glimmering starshine Pauline could see Guy standing by the wicket in the high grey wall, a remote and spectral form against the blackness all around him where the invisible trees gathered and hoarded the gloom. She sighed with relief to find that the arms with which so gently he enfolded her were indeed warm with life. Her passage over the lawn had been one long increasing fear that the shape, so indeterminate and motionless that awaited her approach, might not be Guy in life, but a wan image of what he had been, a demon lover, a shadow from the cave of death.
"Guy, my darling, my darling, it is you! Oh, I was so frightened that when I came close you wouldn't really be there."