Canon Alington had purposely walked on at the beginning of this colloquy, and into his head there came the words “a little child shall lead them.” He was a trifle disconcerted when he found that his little child was not leading anybody, until Ambrose explained the plan about the sermon.
But there was for Hugh no coolness of the garden, not, at any rate, of this garden, and he only waited for the low thunder of the organ to come booming out from the open church door, to set out, at a pace most unsuited to this hot morning, along the road up which he had gone at much about the same time yesterday. All the doubts and questioning of the evening before were gone, or if not gone were invisible in the flame that consumed them, were perhaps but the sticks and fuel that contributed to the brightness of its burning. He had to declare to her his love; that was his part, and nothing else was his part. He had no spare emotion with which to feel nervous or afraid; all he felt or was, it seemed to him, was caught up into the burning, into the beacon that leaped in flame within him. He did not know whether the road seemed long or short, or the morning hot or cold; the minor consciousness of life had no existence for him just then. In a few minutes he would be with the reality of life, the best was no more than shadow. And once again he was told she was in the garden, and once again, hatless, he followed the butler out.
She saw and knew; it was the face of her lover that looked at her dumbly, eagerly, and both waited, for he had but the one word to say to her, till they were alone. Then he came a step closer to her, and his eyes were like hot coals.
“Meine Seele, mein Herz,” he said, still very quietly, still without putting out his hand even to her.
And but for those burning eyes, and his mouth that trembled a little, you would have said that nothing momentous, nothing that concerned life and death and the deeps of the human soul, was passing on that quiet, sunny terrace.
But how well she knew it, and how it seemed to her that her heart must take wings and fly to him. Yet even as it poised, fluttering, in act to go, all the warnings of the tapping window blind last night came into her mind. He was so young, and the years that would make her old would but be adding strength and vigour to his manhood. And she put up her hand, as if to keep him off.
“No, no,” she said. “You don’t mean it, Hugh, you don’t consider—you don’t know.”
“It is all I know,” he said.
There was a moment’s absolute silence; he had said all that he had come to say, but from her answer he had to say more.
“Do you send me away?” he asked.