He turned away to do so, but he looked back again, and said, in low, passionate tones:
“You never counted me. I was a figure naught in the counting all along.”
“See—there is a chair that will be in the way,” she replied calmly; but she flushed, and bowed her head. She turned away, and he dragged an armful of rugs into a corner.
When the actors came in, Lettie was moving a vase of flowers. While they played, she sat looking on, smiling, clapping her hands. When it was finished Leslie came and whispered to her, whereon she kissed him unobserved, delighting and exhilarating him more than ever. Then they went out to prepare the next act.
George did not return to her till she called him to help her. Her colour was high in her cheeks.
“How do you know you did not count?” she said nervously, unable to resist the temptation to play this forbidden game.
He laughed, and for a moment could not find any reply.
“I do!” he said. “You knew you could have me any day, so you didn’t care.”
“Then we’re behaving in quite the traditional fashion,” she answered with irony.
“But you know,” he said, “you began it. You played with me, and showed me heaps of things—and those mornings—when I was binding corn, and when I was gathering the apples, and when I was finishing the straw-stack—you came then—I can never forget those mornings—things will never be the same—You have awakened my life—I imagine things that I couldn’t have done.”