He felt like one struggling blindly through the storm of his emotions, answering some call that was not for help but of command. Was that the end of it all? Would he never again hold her in his arms? Tentatively he took her hand which did not resist his holding as they walked.
"My dear," he said--almost below his breath--"I suppose I've seemed weak--but--I love you. It was not weakness. I can't explain it, but if you knew, really it was strength."
"Please don't say any more--not now," said she and lengthened her stride and threw back her head that all the full sweep of the air might beat upon her face and throat.
It never consciously occurred to her that a woman's throat and the fine column of her neck could express her beauty to a man. Yet as they walked, she knew that his eyes had seen such beauty in hers.
So it was, when Jane looked up again, they had gone. For another half hour and more she sat there in her bed in the heather, trying to appreciate all that it meant. But again and again the sequence of her conventional thoughts was disturbed by the vision of those two as her eyes turned to the gateway in the bracken and she saw them in her mind with lips touching and heads close pressed together in that long embrace.
With that vision all conventionality slipped from her control, even from the very substance of her thoughts. Instinctively she knew she had been witness of something she had neither power nor right to judge when, forcing herself to regard it as all the years of habit and custom would have her do, she shut her eyes to the sight of them in that bracken and called upon her judgment to dispassionate her mind.
That evening she contrived to be alone with Mary after tea. They walked in the garden, round the paths with their borders of thrift in heavy cushions of growth.
In a tone of casual unconcern, Jane asked her about her game of golf.
Her pause in answering was significant. In full confidence, Jane expected the lie and understood her sister still the less when, having weighed the truth against expediency, she replied--
"We didn't play golf. We went up onto the moors above Penlock."