“Because she’s gone away.”
It was almost as though she had told him that Cherry had died. “Away? Where to?”
“I don’t know. Lorie didn’t say; he took her. Perhaps, to the convent. Poor little girl, you—you frightened her, Peter.”
He was all amazement. What a contrast there was between these two! The boy so inexperienced and crestfallen; the golden woman so wise and quiet. “Yes, you, Peter. You’re so natural and uncivilized. You were too sudden with her. You told her that you loved her just as a child would—directly you felt it. You wanted to kiss her without waste of time. You galloped too fast, Peter; you tried to take all the fences at one stride.” Her voice grew more tender; she folded her hands in her lap, looking away from him, straight before her. “You’re—you’re the sort of lover we older women dream of when the hour’s gone by. The men who come to us are too cautious; they watch for the lines in our faces. They’ve learnt to play safe. But you, with your glorious youth——! And she didn’t recognize it—didn’t know what you were offering.” The blue eyes came back slowly to his face. She ended, “And so, she’s gone away.”
Peter felt unhappy and yet comforted. She had envied him something of which he had been ashamed—the unavoidable indiscretion of his lack of age. She had called it glorious; she hadn’t thought it foolish. “But what must I do? Will she—will she come back again? Will she understand, one day, the way you do?”
She answered evasively. “One day! We women all understand one day.”
He repeated his question, “But what must I do?”
She put her arm about his shoulder. “Wait. It’s all that either of us can do.”
Why did she include herself? The room was very silent. In its patient preparedness, it must have spent years in waiting. The garden outside seemed to listen, tiptoe. The door was white, as if little used. The sunlight on the lawn crept slowly. Everything watched; yet nothing was wideawake. For whom were they all expectant? Always there is one who allows, and one who loves. Was that the explanation?
Above the open volume of cloistered consolation, with its disillusioned counsels of timid patience, the Faun Man smiled from his silver frame. Peter had always thought——.