Something was moving. A shadow stole across his doorway. It was gone in an instant—gone so quickly that, between sleeping and waking, it might have been imagined. His heart was pounding.
In her room he saw the white blur of her bed. Timid lest he should disturb her, he groped his hand across her pillow. It was still warm.
As he ran down the passage a cold draught met him. The door into the farmyard was open. He hesitated on the threshold, straining his eyes into the dusk of moonlight that leaked from under clouds. As he listened, he heard Desire’s laugh, low and secret, and the whisper of departing footsteps. Barefooted he followed. In the road, the horses’ beads turned towards the wood, a carriage was standing with its lamps extinguished. The door opened; there was the sound of people entering; then it slammed.
“Desire! Desire!”
The driver humped his shoulders, tugged at the reins, and lashed furiously; the horses leapt forward and broke into a gallop. From the window Vashti leant out. A child’s hand fluttered. He ran on breathlessly.
Under the roof of the woods all was blackness. The sounds of travel grew fainter. When he reached the meadows beyond, there was nothing but the mist of moonlight on still shadows—he heard nothing but the sullen weeping of rain-wet trees and grass. He threw himself down beside the road, clenching his hands and sobbing.
Next day Hal arrived to fetch him back to London. The wagonette was already standing at the door. He thought that he had said all his farewells, fixed everything indelibly on his memory, when he remembered the lumber-room. Without explanation, he dashed into the house and climbed the stairs.
Pushing open the door, he entered gently. It was here, if anywhere, that he might expect to find her—the last place in which they had been together. Old’ finery, dragged from boxes by her hands, lay strewn about. The very sunshine, groping across the floor, seemed to be searching for her. He was going over to the place by the window where they had sat, when he halted, bending forward. Scrawled dimly in the dust upon the panes, in childish writing, were the words, “I love you.” And again, lower down, “I love you.”
His heart gave a bound. That was what she had been trying to make him say last night, “I love you.” He hadn’t said it—hadn’t realized or thought it possible that two children could love like that. He knew now what she had meant, “You don’t say the right things, Teddy—no, never. You don’t understand.” He knew now that from the first he had loved her; his boyish fear of ridicule had forbidden him to own it. There on the panes, like a message from the dead, soon to be overlaid with dust, was her confession.
Voices called to him, bidding him hurry. Footsteps were ascending. Some one was coming along the passage. The writing was sacred. It was meant for his eyes alone. No one should see it but himself. He stooped his lips to the pane. When Hal entered the writing had vanished.