His face lit up with the unimaginable light of love.
‘Yes; the sooner the better,’ he said.
I slept long and late that night, from the mere exhaustion, I suppose, of thought and suspense; did no more than turn and sleep again, when I was called; and woke finally to find it was after ten, and the calmness of the promise in the dawn had been fulfilled by a perfect day of unclouded blue. I went through into Dick’s room, but he had already dressed and gone down, and even as I passed the window I saw him and Margery come from the conservatory and out on to the lawn, surrounded, as was her wont, by a wave of dogs. But this morning it seemed that Dick had no word for any of them; and thus they passed out of sight behind the bushes. I knew as surely as if the thing had already happened that Dick would have something to tell me when they came back, but what that should be I had no kind of idea. We three had played like children together for years: had Margery her secret, even as Dick and I had had? Or had she none? Were both of us her playmates?
It cannot have been very long before Dick came back, for I was still in the dining-room, staring blankly at the morning paper, with my breakfast yet untasted. As soon as I saw him I knew.
‘So it is you,’ I said, and stopped. Then our compact and our friendship aided me. ‘Oh, make her happy, Dick!’ said I.
The dear man sat down on the edge of the table.
‘Jack, I’m cut in two about it all,’ he said, and never have I seen so intense a happiness on the face of living being. ‘Really I am. Oh, damn it all! And Margery told me to come and tell you, and she wants to see you. She says she’ll see you alone first, and then we’ll all play the fool together, as we’ve always done. So I had to lie to her. First thing I did was to lie to her, and I told her that you were not particularly fit this morning—thunderstorm kept you awake—and that I didn’t know if you’d be up to a pentathlon.’
He broke off suddenly.
‘My God, if it only wasn’t you!’ he said.
I remember feeling then as if I was a piece of mechanism external to myself. This mechanism saw Dick sitting on the edge of the table, saw breakfast waiting and ate it, and spoke and moved in obedience to an instinct that seemed to have nothing to do with me. Behind somewhere sat Me, watching what went on.