Joyce turned quickly to her father, and for the first time Craddock saw her troubled and disturbed.
"Oh, father, I can't possibly," she said quickly. "Mr. Lathom gave it me——"
She broke off short, and her face and neck were flushed with the blood that sprang there. Then bright-eyed and rosy as the dawn she turned to Craddock.
"It is a clever sketch, isn't it?" she said. "And all the background is only three dabs and a smudge. I suppose they happen to be put in the right place. He did it one afternoon when Granny and I were having tea with him."
She gave him a few seconds more for looking, and then quickly held her hand out for it, and replaced it on the table. Then she baldly and ruthlessly changed the subject.
"I don't think you have even been up here before, Mr. Craddock," she said. "It was my nursery once, as the rocking-horse and the doll's house witness, then my school-room, as the time-table of lessons above the chimney-piece witnesses, and please let it now become your smoking-room and light another cigarette. Now do tell us about Egypt. I know darling Granny will want to stop in Cairo, and go to every dance and dinner-party."
The new topic effectively diverted her father from the channel concerning Charles and his sketch, for he was always more ready to talk about things that concerned his own comfort than any topic which was unrelated thereto. But a week in Cairo, before going up the Nile to settle down for a month's sunshine at Luxor, was not unreasonable: if Lady Crowborough desired more Cairo, there was, of course, no cause why she should not indulge herself to any extent in its pleasures and festivities. But she would be obliged to indulge herself alone: the party whose sole object was the pursuit of health for Philip, could not be expected to hamper their guest. Joyce had no inclination, so he assumed then, for gaieties like these; the temples of Karnak were much more to her mind....
Joyce left the two men before there was any sign of the discussion growing lukewarm, and went to her bedroom. This was on the other side of the house fronting the full bugling of the gale, and the maddened tattoo of the rain on her panes. It was impossible in this onslaught of elemental fury to open her windows, but she felt in the very bones and blood of her a longing for the out-of-doors, whatever its conditions. Up and down her room she walked, strangely and unwontedly excited, and had she obeyed her impulse, she would have put on a cloak, and let herself out of the house, to walk or to run, or even to stand in the blackness of the night, and the bellowing of the wind, and feel herself one with the wild simplicity and force of the storm. Better even than that she would have liked to go forth and plunge herself, naked under the hueless night, with the torrent and froth of the weir, to struggle and be buffeted by the furious water, to be herself and nobody else, not anybody's daughter, not anybody's companion, not even his with whom her soul seemed suddenly mated. She had gone out for a drenching walk to this weir only this afternoon, and had leaned over its grey wooden railing, and watched the water in flood over the promontory where a tent had stood. Below her a carpet of forget-me-nots, where she had knelt, and she could have found it in her heart to wade through the foam of the flood to kneel there again, and recapture the first thrill of the knowledge that had come to her then. That unbidden flash of desire had lightened on her but for a second, and she had instantly shoved it away again, slamming the door on it, and turning the key, and shooting the bolts. But it had been there, and to-night as she paced her room, she knew quite well what lay behind the barred doors of her consciousness, and though she had imprisoned it, giving it no bail to go abroad, she was not ashamed of it. It burned there within her, warmly radiant, and though she would not allow herself to see the light of it, she knew it to be there, and secretly exulted in the knowledge.
But she did not directly want to throw it open to herself: just now she only wanted to be herself, as she felt she would be if she could be out in the storm. She did not formulate in her mind the indubitable necessity of unlocking her inmost self in order to be herself. Illogically enough, but with a very human inconsistency, she longed for the conditions that would give her the sense of freedom, of expansion that she demanded, without contemplating that on which her whole freedom was based. Yet she knew well that against which she revolted, from which she longed to escape. In a word, it was the fact, and the implication founded on that fact, that Arthur Craddock was coming to Egypt with them. Coupled with it was the idea, so cursorily introduced by her father, that she should give Craddock the sketch that Charles had made of her. Literally, no expedition of ingenuity could have framed a more unfeasible request. There was nothing in the world she could less easily have parted with. And the suggestion was just thrown over the shoulder, so to speak, like an idle question, a meaningless complimentary speech! But now she wondered whether it was only that. Taken in conjunction with Craddock, and his bloodless wooing of her, she felt it was possible that this was in the nature of a test-question. Was it? Was it?