He touched the tips of her fingers. Her soft, warm hand yielded itself readily, and slid into his.
“Do I count for no one?” he whispered.
There was a silence in the little room. The yellow glare had faded from the sky, and a night wind was blowing softly in. A clock in the distance struck one. Together they sat and gazed out upon the darkness. Looking more than once into her pale face, Matravers realized again that wonderful change. His own emotions were curiously disturbed. He, himself, so remarkable through all his life for a changeless serenity of purpose, and a fixed masterly control over his whole environment, felt himself suddenly like a rudderless ship at the mercy of a great unknown sea. A sense of drifting was upon him. They were both drifting. Surely this little room, with its dim light and shadows and its faint odour of roses, had become a hotbed of tragedy. He had imagined that death itself was something like this,—a dissolution of all fixed purposes. And with it all, this remnant of life, if it were but a remnant, seemed suddenly to be flowing through his veins with all the rich, surpassing sweetness of some exquisite symphony!
“You count for a great deal,” she said. “If you had not come to me, I think that I must have died.... If I were to lose you ... I think that I should die.”
She threw herself back in her chair with a gesture of complete abandonment. Her arms hung loosely down over its sides. The moonlight, which had been gradually gathering strength, shone softly upon her pale face and on the soft, lustrous pearls at her throat. Her dark, wet eyes seemed touched with smouldering fire. She looked at him. He sprang to his feet and walked restlessly up and down the room. His forehead was hot and dry, and his hands were trembling.
“There is not any reason,” he said, halting suddenly in front of her, “why we should lose one another. I was coming to-morrow morning to make a proposition to you. If you accept it, we shall be forced to see a great deal of one another.”
“Yes?”
“You perhaps did not know that I had any ambitions as a dramatic author. Yet my first serious work after I left Oxford was a play; I took it up yesterday.”
“You have really written a play,” she murmured, “and you never told me.”
“At least I am telling you now,” he reminded her; “I am telling you before any one, because I want your help.”