He scarcely knew how to greet her. How does one greet a girl whose permission he has yet to gain, whereas her father has already consented? Moreover, there was his last memory of her, at midnight dodging into the taxi to avoid him.
She spared him the trouble of deciding by holding out her hand. "I know that you saw me. That's what I've come to talk about."
Her smile as she said it was both embarrassed and frank. She looked like an honest youngster who had come voluntarily to confess and, if need be, to be spanked. Tabs noticed that her lower lip was tremulous and that she was whipping up her courage. His mind went back to days when she had really been a child and he a man—when he had bound up cut fingers for her, had taken her on fishing expeditions, had taught her to cast her first fly and, as a reward, before the nursery lights went out, had been allowed to see her snuggled safe in bed. Little Terry, she had been his tiny sister in those days whom he had loved with no thought of gain—just a small companion for whom he bought exciting presents wherever he voyaged across the
world—a doll's house in China, a quirt in Mexico, a scarlet riding-saddle in Persia. It hurt him to see her afraid of him now—afraid of him because he was about to offer her the greatest of all presents. Was she afraid because he was too old for her?
"You don't need to talk about it unless you like," he said kindly. "Whatever you do or have done is right."
"That's not true." She wrung her hands. "Oh, Tabs, you make it so hard for me when you're generous. I haven't done right. I'm in a tangle. I don't know whether what I'll do in the future will be any better."
They were still standing just as they had confronted each other when she had entered. Tabs glanced round the room at the used breakfast-table, Maisie's crumpled petition lying in the grate, the flood of sunlight and the tops of the heads of passers-by stealing across the pane above the stiff row of tulips. His eyes went back to the flower-face of this young girl as she stood before him, fashionably attired and battling to conceal the storm of her distress. The setting struck him as inadequate and unprivate. The hats which stole by above the row of tulips seemed to belong to spies. At any moment Ann might tap and request that she be allowed to clear the table. He believed that in the next half-hour his dream of the last five years was to be shattered; otherwise, if it had not been to spare him, why should Terry have paid him so unconventional a visit, at such an unconventional hour, when by every
law of usage she should have been waiting for him to call on her?
"How about upstairs?" he suggested. "In my study we shall be sure to be undisturbed."
"No, Tabs, dear," and the little added word touched him strangely, "I've got to say at once what has to be said. It's like waiting at the dentist's—it's the waiting that's so wearing." Her face lit up with the ghost of a smile. "When you've faced the real pain, it's over in a second."