Afternoon lengthened out. He manufactured reasons for her silence. She had probably intended to telegraph him from Euston, but had been rushed at the last minute. She would do it from Liverpool before she sailed. That would mean that he would hear from her by seven. Anyway she had his flowers and she had his book—so many things to remind her of him. He pictured her curled up in a corner of the railway-carriage, blind to the flying country, deaf to what was going on about her, smiling over the pages of Life Till Twenty-One, and recognizing what poetry he had brought to his loving of her. She wouldn’t be hard on him any longer for his behavior on the ride from Glastonbury. She would understand why he hadn’t liked her to speak of love as though it were flirtation. Perhaps already she was feeling a little proud of him—nearly as proud as he felt of her.
Seven struck on the clock downstairs. Eight, nine, ten! No message would come till morning now; but he would not let himself believe that she had not sent one. Probably she had given it to Horace, and he had slipped it into his pocket and forgotten. Something like that! Or else, being a girl and afraid to appear forward, she would write a letter on the ship and send it ashore by the pilot. A letter would seem to her so much less important than a telegram.
His mother looked in on her way to bed. “Still up? You’ve been hiding all evening. What have you been doing? Working?”
She slipped her arm about his neck and laid her face against his cheek. She was trying to sympathize—trying to draw him out. What did she suspect? Instinctively he barricaded his privacy. He felt a cruel shame that his secret should be guessed. Why he should feel ashamed of love—of love which was so beautiful—he could not tell. “What have you been doing, Teddy?”
He smiled cheerfully. “Doing! I’ve had an idea. A good one. I’ve been thinking it out.”
“For your next book?”
“Perhaps.”
When she was gone, he turned out his light. He knew she would be watching for its glow against the trees. If she did not see it, she would believe him sleeping and her mind would be at rest. Then he seated himself by the open window in the darkness.
He thought of Vashti, who had not married Hal. Did Desire know that her mother had not married? He remembered the horror he had felt when he had learnt that fact—the chivalrous pity for Desire it had aroused. It was then that he had planned, when he became a man, to help her in the paying of the price. And now——
He smiled frowningly. She didn’t seem to need his help. She was the happiest, most radiant person he had ever met. She had found the intenser world, for which he had always been searching—the world which is forever somewhere else. His world—his poor little world, which he had tried to make so fine that he might offer it to her—his world seemed dull in comparison.