Next day after lunch her mother and sisters went to pay a long postponed call upon a new family in the neighbourhood, because Margaret insisted they must take advantage of this glorious weather which would surely not last very long.
Pauline spent the early afternoon with the Rector and Birdwood, writing labels while they sowed a lot of new sweet-peas which had been sent to the Rector for an opinion upon their merits. The clock was striking four when Guy strolled into the garden. Somehow Pauline's labels were not so carefully written after his arrival, and at last the Rector advised her to take Hazlewood and show him Anemone Blanda. They left the big wall-garden and went across the lawn in front of the house to the second wall-garden, where most of the Rector's favourites grew as it pleased them best.
"Oh, they've all gone to bed," said Pauline.
Guy knelt down, and opened the petals of one.
"They're exactly the colour of your eyes," he said looking up at her.
Pauline was conscious that the simple statement was fraught with a significance far greater than anything which had so far happened in her life. It was ringing in her ears like a bugle-call that sounded some far-flung advance, and involuntarily she drew back and began to talk nonsense breathlessly, while Guy did not speak. Nor must she let him speak, she told herself, for behind that simple comparison how many questions were trembling.
"Oh, I wonder if the others are back yet," she finally exclaimed, and forthwith hurried from the garden toward the house. She wished she must not look back over her shoulder to see Guy following her so gravely. Of course, when they were standing in the hall, the others had not come back; and the house in its silence was a hundred times more portentous than the garden. And what would Guy be thinking of her for bringing him back to this voicelessness in which she could not any longer talk nonsense? Here the least movement, the slightest gesture, the most ordinary word would be weighted for both of them with an importance that seemed unlimited. For the first time the Rectory was strangely frightening; and when through the silent passages they were walking toward the nursery, it was the exploration of a dream. Yet, however undiscoverable the object that was leading them, she was glad to see the nursery door, for there within would surely come back to her the ease of an immemorial familiarity. Yet in that room of childhood, that room the most bound up with the simple progress of her life, she found herself counting the birds, berries and daisies upon the walls, as if she were beholding them vaguely for the first time. Why was she unpicking Margaret's work or folding into this foolish elaboration of triangles Monica's music? And why did Guy behave so oddly, taking up all sorts of unnatural positions, leaning upon the rickety mantelshelf, balancing himself upon the fender, pleating the curtains and threading his way with long legs in and out, in and out of the chairs?
"Pauline!"
He had stopped abruptly by the fireplace and was not looking at her when he spoke. Oh, he would never succeed in lifting even from the floor that match which with one foot he was trying to lift on to the other foot.
"Pauline!"