Now I had aggravated Clarissa to determination. In those few moments of her anger she had left all her timidity, all her childlikeness, behind her. So far from increasing the doubt of him, which I know must have been already in her mind, I had in one simple movement—the relation of my story—swept it utterly away. She believed in and loved him then more wholly and completely than she had ever done before, and, as I thought it all out, point by point, along the rigid line of logic, I came to the conclusion that God and my mother had not qualified me for so deft and delicate a business as the meddling with a woman's heart.
"Dandy," said I, presently, "we'd better get back to lunch. We've made hopeless fools of ourselves. Even God, who made woman, knows how to treat them no better than we. Or why did He send that man into her life? It's not losing a woman to see no more of her. We should not have lost, we should have won her, if she'd gone back to Dominica. But we've lost her utterly now. Unless—unless—" the hope of it leapt suddenly into my mind—"unless he never marries her."
It was one of those things too great and generous in circumstance to count upon. No sooner did it enter my thoughts, than back came the picture of Clarissa—a child by her bedside upon her knees—praying God that she would never see me again; at which, when I had contemplated it for a moment, I rose quickly to my feet.
"Dandy," I said again, "we'd better get back to London." Therefore, taking the tone of my voice, he fell behind disconsolately to my heels and, in silence, we walked back to Ballysheen. Only once did I look round at him. It was when a rabbit scurried across the path in front of us. Then I turned my head.
"Did you see him?" said I.
He stood still and stared up into my face.
"I did," said he, "but I didn't want to."
I know that feeling so well. I was quite aware I had to go back to lunch. God knows I did not want to.
CHAPTER XIX
There is something in common between Bellwattle and Dandy. I cannot easily describe it, but I find a strange resemblance. It lies, I think, in their powers of intuition, for whereas Dandy takes the color of his mood from the subtlest tone of my voice, it is with Bellwattle that she knows my mood before I have so much as uttered a single word.