Mrs. Lyeth hastened to laugh, but her laugh was troubled. It sounded thin, as forced laughter ever does. She unfurled her fan again, and agitated it with sudden vigor.
"It may not be," she murmured.
Her voice was so low that even the breeze did not catch it. And now, as she turned to her companion, it seemed to him that her eyes were compassionate, sympathetic even, awake to possibilities yet careless of result.
At the moment there came to Tancred that annoyance which visits us in dream. Before him was a flower more radiant than any parterre had ever produced. With a reach of the arm it could be his, but his arm had lost its cunning. Do what he might, it refused to move. And still the flower glowed, and still the arm hung pendent and quasi-paralyzed at his side. It may be—such things have happened—it may be that of the inward effort Mrs. Lyeth marked some sign. She shut her fan again, and made as though to rise. But this movement of hers, like the clock in the fable, must have dissolved the spell. Abruptly Tancred was on his feet.
"One instant," he said. "There, you can give me that. Nay, see, if you wish to—go."
And at this he stood aside, as though to let her pass. The magnetism, however, which youth possesses, may have coerced her. In any event she made no further effort to leave; she sat, her eyes a trifle dilated, a whiteness quivering beneath the lace-work at her neck.
"That is good of you," he added; "I have but a word to say. Listen to it, will you? I was sure you would. Last night—or was it last night?—it seems a year ago. H'm, there are people whom we meet—you must have experienced the same thing—people that disturb us with suggestions of something that has gone before. When I saw you last evening—no, not that; but when I heard your voice, there came with it a reminiscence of earlier and forgotten days. It was not of the present I thought, but of a past I remembered I had dreamed. It was like a tangled skein. One after another the threads unloosed, and as they separated from each parting knot a memory returned. You were not a stranger, you were a friend I had lost. I could have sat with you, and from yesterday I could have led you back from one horizon to another until that posting-house was reached where our destiny changed its horses and our hands were first unclasped."
This fine speech delivered, he looked down and plucked at his cuff. And presently, as he was about to speak again, Mrs. Lyeth raised her fan.
"After that I have either to thank you or to go!" Her voice was less severe than pained, and she seemed to retreat yet further in her chair. "And I thank you," she added, after a pause, "but it is you that must go."
To this Tancred answered nothing. He contented himself with looking insubordinate and cross.