“Oh, Hugh, how my heart knew it!” she said.
Hugh was silent for a moment; then he gave a great sigh, and immediately after a great crack of laughter.
“Oh, isn’t it fun?” he cried. “Here we go, Andrew Robb and I, and everybody has to have dinner early in order to see Andrew Robb’s play and to be in time to hear Hugh Robb sing. Here they go together, trotting along in their beautiful carriage through fat London!”
Edith winced and started; natural to Hugh as was this sudden change and thoroughly characteristic of him, she felt jarred. She had been so far away at that moment from all thought of herself or these streets of London, standing with Hugh in the innermost temple and sacred place of their two souls, that she could not help that sudden revulsion of feeling that came to her lips in a sharply-taken breath. It had seemed to her so wonderful that he, too, as well as she should have looked on Elsa as herself, and the very next moment he had swum up out of the deep and was splashing again on the surface of things. He had been conscious, too, that she was startled and out of tune with this boisterous mood, and turned to her again.
“Why, what is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
She was not quite herself even yet.
“Oh, Hugh, you pulled me away!” she said. “I was so deep down, we were both so deep down, and—and——”
She saw his face of innocent surprise in the light of a passing gas-lamp, and her heart went out to him in the exuberance of his boyish spirits just as fully as before. It was all Hugh, she told herself, all the expression of his glorious youth which she loved so.
“I am quite ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t know what was the matter with me. What a splendid evening it has been, and what fun it was too—just that! And here go the Robbs, as you say, trotting along in their beautiful carriage.”
But it was Hugh who was grave now.