He did not release it, however, only held it tighter.
"I'm knocked right off my mental reservation. I don't know what I'm doing. You shouldn't stand and smile at me like that. What's the matter with you, Rosalind? You don't look happy!"
His last words were a surprise to himself, for until he uttered them he had not clearly realised that in spite of her radiant beauty and her perfect clothes there was a haunting enigmatic sadness about her. And as once before, he fancied it was her smile that made her so tragic-looking. Suddenly it seemed to him that he heard a little bell tolling somewhere. He gave a glance round the room, but his eyes returned to her.
"What has happened to you?" he asked, in a low voice.
"My son is dead," she said, and she still smiled that bright, tragic smile, and looked at him with dry, beautiful eyes, that were too tired to weep. His were the eyes that filled with tears. He knew that he was in the presence of grief too deep for words. The hand that he awkwardly brushed across his face was his salute to sorrow.
"Thank you," her voice was a little dreary wind; "thank you, kindest of all friends." She moved away from him then in a vague, aimless fashion, went to a bowl of violets and smelled them, and looked up at a strange blue picture on the wall, the like of which he had never seen in an hotel and could not believe to be part of the furnishing of the Royal. It was, indeed, Hope sitting at the top of the world playing on her brave one string; but Bramham had never seen Watts's picture before. While she still stood there she spoke to him.
"Don't ever speak of it again, will you?... I can't ... I am not able ..."
"Of course not.... No, all right ... I won't," he hastily and earnestly assured her.
He wondered if she knew of Carson's presence in Durban. It was strange that they had had no sight of her that morning. He would have given much to have seen her meet Carson face to face unexpectedly.
"Were you in this morning?" he presently asked. "I was about the hotel for an hour or so with two friends—Carson and Luce Abinger. We might so easily have run across you——"