"Of course," she said, "if you want to be left alone——"
"But I don't," I interrupted, reaching for my hat. "I want to come too."
"You nice old thing!" she exclaimed, passing her arm through mine. "We'll walk to Heather Hill. Arthur says that we can see the sea from there. Come along!"
So we started away, the four of us together. Presently, however, Arthur and Isobel drew away in front. Allan, with a little grunt, stopped to light his pipe.
"Arthur may keep his compact in the letter," he said, "but in the spirit he breaks it every time their eyes meet. You can't blame him. It's human nature, after all—the gravitation of youth. Arnold, I'm afraid you awoke to your responsibilities too late."
"You think—that she understands?" I asked quietly.
"Why not? She is almost a woman, and she is older than her years. Look at them now. He wants to talk seriously, and she is teasing him all the time. She has the instinct of her sex. She will conceal what she feels until the—psychological moment. But she does feel—she begins to understand. I am sure of it. Watch them!"
We kept silence for a while, I myself struggling with a sickening sense of despair against this newborn and most colossal folly. I think that I was always possessed of an average amount of self-control, but my great fear now was lest my secret should in any way escape me. Mabane's words had carried conviction with them. Life itself for these few deadly minutes seemed changed. The birds had ceased to sing, and the warmth of the sunshine had faded out of the fluttering east wind. I saw no longer the heath starred with yellow and purple blooms, the distant line of blue hills. The turf was no longer springy beneath my feet, a grey mist hung over the joyous summer morning. I was back again on my way from Bow Street, threading a difficult passage through the market baskets of Covent Garden, the child stepping blithely by my side, graceful even then, notwithstanding her immatureness, and quaintly attractive, though her deep blue eyes were full of tears, and the white terror had not passed wholly from her face. It was those few moments of her complete and trustful helplessness which had transformed my life for me, those few moments in which the huge folly of these later days had been born. For her very coming seemed to have been at a chosen time—at one of those periods of weariness which a man must feel whose sympathy with and desire for life leads him into many and devious forms of distraction, only to find in time the same dregs at the bottom of the cup. The joy of her fresh childish beauty, her pure sweet trustfulness, at all times a delicate flattery to any man, just the more so to me, a little inclined towards self-distrust, was like a fragrant, a heart-stirring memory even now. I looked back upon these years which lay between her youth and my fast approaching middle-age—grey, weary years, whose follies seemed now to rise up and stalk by my side, the ghosts of misspent days, ghosts of the sickly reasonings of a sham philosophy which lead into the broad way because its thoroughfares are easy and pleasant, and pressed by the feet of the great majority. I kept my eyes fixed upon the ground and I felt that strange thrill of despair pulling at my heartstrings, dragging me downwards—the despair which is almost akin to physical suffering.... And then a voice came floating back to me down the west wind. Its call at such a moment seemed almost symbolical.
"Come along, you very lazy people! Arnold, may I walk with you for a little way? Arthur is not at all brilliant this morning, and he does not amuse me."
"I am afraid," I began, "that as an entertainer——"