‘We go together then,’ he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. It was but a despairing, drowning cry.
She made a little gesture with her head.
‘Come back here,’ she said. ‘Let me put my hands on your shoulders again. Yes, just like that. It is all settled. Charles agrees. He knows enough: I think he guesses the rest. I shall go back to London, and get work there. I shall find it perfectly easy to do that. If you will give me a little testimonial, it would help me. You mustn’t come to see me. You mustn’t write to me. I won’t say anything so foolish as to tell you to forget me. You can’t, to begin with, and also I don’t want you to. I want you to remember me always, with love and with honour——’
She stopped for a moment, smiling at him through her tears.
‘You made me cry two mornings ago,’ she said, ‘and I felt so ashamed of myself. I don’t feel ashamed of myself now. I—I am rather proud of myself, and I want you to be proud of me.’
Her voice broke utterly, and she sat with her head in her hands, sobbing her heart out. Presently with one hand she felt for his, and sat thus clasping it.
‘Sit by me,’ she said at length, ‘and very soon we must walk back over the down, and when we come to the skylark’s nest you shall go on and I will follow after a few minutes. Let’s go through these few months, as if pasting them into our memories. We must each have the same remembrance as the other. I hated you at first, do you know? I hated working for you. The books began to bring us together, the mischievous things. Then there came the wood-block for your book-plate, but you apologised. And then came the catalogue, was not that it? By that time I had got to love working for you, though I did not guess at once what was the matter with me. Then came the spring day, that first day of real spring, and I knew. And there is one thing I want to ask you. Did Lord Inverbroom ever tell you about my people?’
‘No, never.’
‘Well, you might like to know. My father was a great friend of his at one time. But he went off with another woman, deserting my mother. That was another reason why we have settled our affairs as we have settled them. I thought I would like to tell you that. We can’t bring on others the misery they brought.’
She put her hand through the crook of his arm.