Reggie paused, and it was a cruel moment for Gertrude.
"Yes, I will say it here," he went on at length. "Do you remember my telling you, three days ago, on the morning I came, that everything was right now I was with you? That was true."
"And it is true, and you have forgiven me?" asked Gertrude.
Was the ghost of Venusberg not laid yet? Else what was that murmur which Reggie had heard again, when Mrs. Rivière spoke of Eva, like the burden of a remembered song?—"She is not gone really, she has only gone elsewhere?" Was that the smell of red geraniums borne along from the flower-beds by the warm wind, faint, acrid, as you smell them in the dusty window-boxes of the great squares and streets in London? There should be no geraniums here, only wild flowers—meadow-sweet, dog-rose, violet—
The sound of Gertrude's voice had long died away, but Reggie stood silent. An overpowering feeling of anxiety swept over her; the trust that she had felt in his assurance that all was right was suddenly covered by a rolling breaker of doubt. And that silence cost her more than any speech.
At last it became unbearable.
"Speak, Reggie," she cried, "whatever you have to tell me."
"Come, let us go round the garden, where we can be quiet," he said, and together, in silence, they followed a path leading down between dark evergreen bushes to the garden gate.
They sat down on a garden seat where they were hidden from the crowd gathering on the lawn.