"Good-bye."
He bent over and touched her hand with his lips. Then the Rectory stairs had borne him down like a feather: the Rectory door had assumed a kind of humanity, so that the handle seemed to relinquish his grasp with an affectionate unwillingness. Out in the drive, where the purple trees were washed by the February dusk, he stood perplexed at himself because in a wild kiss he had not crushed Pauline to his heart. Had it been from some scruple of honour in case her father and mother should not countenance his love? Had it sprung out of some impulse to postpone for a while a joy that must be the sharpest he would ever know? Or was it that in the past he had often kissed too lightly so that now, when he really loved, he could not imagine the kiss unpassionate and fierce that would seal her immortally to love, yet leave her still a child?
As he paused in that golden February dusk, Guy rejoiced he had told his love in such an awe of her girlhood; and when from the nursery window Pauline blew one kiss and vanished like a fay at mortal trespassing, he floated homeward upon the airy salute, weighing no more than a seed of dandelion to his own sense of being. Upon his way he observed nothing, neither passer-by nor carts in the muddy roads. As he crossed the bridge, the roar of the water into the mill-pool was inaudible, nor did he hear his melodious garden ways. And when Miss Peasey came to his room with the lamp, he could not realize for a moment who she was or what she was talking about. The hour or two before dinner went by as one tranced minute; in a dream he went down to dinner; in a dream he began to carve; in a dream the knife remained motionless in the joint, so that Miss Peasey coming to enquire after his appetite thought it was stuck in a skewer. Upstairs in the library again, he dreamed the evening away; and when the lamp hummed slowly and oilily to extinction he still sat on, till at last the fire perished and from complete darkness he roused himself and went to bed.
Guy was under the cloud of a reaction when he rang the Rectory bell on the morning after. The door looked less amicable, and the dragon-headed knocker stared balefully while he was waiting to be let in. He wondered for whom of the family he ought to ask, but Mrs. Grey came nervously into the hall and invited him into the drawing-room.
"Pauline has gone over to Fairfield," she began in jerky sentences. "Charming ... yes, charming, you came this morning."
The sun had not yet reached the oriel of the drawing-room, that with shadows and fragrance was welcoming Guy where he sat in a winged armchair beside the fire. Time was seeming to celebrate the momentousness of his visit by standing still as in a picture, and he knew that every word and every gesture of Mrs. Grey would in his memory rest always enambered. He was glad, and yet in the captivating quiet a little sorry, that she began to speak at once:
"Of course Pauline told me about yesterday. And of course I would sooner she were in love with a man she loved than with a man who had a great deal of money. But of course you mustn't be engaged at once. At least you can be engaged; you are engaged. Oh, yes, of course, if you weren't engaged, I shouldn't allow you to see each other, and you shall see each other occasionally. Francis has not said anything. The Rector will probably be rather doubtful. Of course I told him; only he happened to be very busy about something in the garden. But he would want Pauline to be happy. Of course she is my favourite—at least I should not say that. I love all my daughters, but Pauline is—well, she has the most beautiful nature in the world. My darling Pauline!"
Mrs. Grey's eyes were wet, and Guy was so full of affectionate gratitude that it was only by blinking very hard at a small picture of Pauline hanging beside the mantelpiece he was able to keep his own dry.
"I have a nicer picture than that, which I will give you," Mrs. Grey promised. "The one that I am fondest of, the one I keep beside my bed. Perhaps you would like a picture of her when she was seventeen? She's just the same now, and really I think she'll always be the same."
"You are too good to me, Mrs. Grey," he sighed.