And he had only shaken hands with her, and said he was going soon, and might he come to see her before he went? And her heart sank, and she said, yes, she 'd be very sorry if he did n't. And he said, When? And she pondered over a possible engagement that did n't matter at all, and said, Tuesday, then, and her heart murmured disconsolately. Two long days.
Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she remembered. And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and the yellow rivers. And of Brazil with all its forests, and the speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads. And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert. Against all these backgrounds she could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.
"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.
And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"
She looked up. There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor Sheila, and the foxhounds. She knew what called.
"Margery!"
"Yes, dears."
"Oh, Lady Margery!"
"Hush, now. It's all right."
She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and try to recapture the magic day in dreams. And be so happy. But the voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than dreaming before her. To-night she would not sleep.