So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the extreme excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss Frost set to work to regain her influence over her ward, to remove that arch, reckless, almost lewd look from the girl’s face. It was a question of heart against sensuality. Miss Frost tried and tried to wake again the girl’s loving heart—which loving heart was certainly not occupied by that man. It was a hard task, an anxious, bitter task Miss Frost had set herself.
But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining of her eyes softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness. The influence of the man was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited, empty and uneasy.
She was due to follow her Alexander in three months’ time, to Sydney. Came letters from him, en route—and then a cablegram from Australia. He had arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her trousseau, to follow. But owing to her change of heart, she lingered indecisive.
“Do you love him, dear?” said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting her thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. “Do you love him sufficiently? That’s the point.”
The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and could not love him—because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half shining with unconscious derision.
“I don’t really know,” she said, laughing hurriedly. “I don’t really.”
Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:
“Well—!”
To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost non-sensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.
And then, most irritating, a complete volte face in her feelings. The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt herself going distracted—she felt she was going out of her mind. For she could not act.