“The taxi! It’s early. We don’t need to go yet. Or d’you mean that you want to take a longer drive?”
“I’ve——” She winked at him. “This isn’t the great big confession—— I’ve to get back for the theatre. Don’t look crestfallen; you’re coming—just the two of us. If we don’t start now, I shan’t have time to dress.”
As he followed her out into the courtyard, he made a mental note: her insistance that he should smoke had been a precautionary measure for a home-defense. Already her manner towards him was growing circumspect. When she had given the driver instructions, she took her seat remotely in the corner. There was one last flicker of her Nell Gwynn mood when she leant out to gaze at the sea lying red behind the gray salt-marshes.
“Good-by, dear little day; you’ve been a sort of honeymoon.” She spied out of the comers of her eyes at Teddy with an impish raising of her brows. It was as though she were asking him whether the day need end.
“Why go back? Why ever go back? Why not get married?” The hand which he tried to seize happened to be Miss Independence. It gave him a friendly pat in rebuke as it escaped him.
“We’re getting stupid again.” Closing her eyes, she curled herself up against the cushions. Her voice was small and tired.
In an instant he was miles away from her, buried beneath his mountain of ice. She was La Belle Dame Sans Merd, chilling his affection with silence. He was amused. He was beginning to understand her tactics. She was easy of approach, but difficult of capture. He looked back; from a child she had been like that. But he wished that she wouldn’t show distrust of him whenever they were alone. It made love seem less gallant, almost ugly—a thing to be dreaded. Was it what had happened to her mother that made her——? “She’s afraid to love too much. Her mother got hurt.” Was this the price of which Hal had spoken? Was his share of the paying to have his ideal lowered by the girl by whom it had been inspired?
He sat in his corner, smoking and scrupulously preserving the gap that lay between them. He was doing his best to show her by his actions that her defensive measures were unnecessary. One hand shaded her eyes, the other lay half open in her lap. Her head drooped forward slightly and her knees were crossed. Her attitude was one of prayer.
“Please go on talking,” she murmured. “Don’t mind if I’m a little quiet.”
He tried to talk. His monologue grew halting. He asked a question; she returned no answer. He ceased speaking to see if that would pique her and rouse response. She seemed to have divined his intention; he felt that, if he peeped behind her hand, he would find her laughing.