“As Balzac’s heroine was to her husband?”
“You have said it.”
“But not always. If there come a time when you care for me, then I may ask you to give me your heart as to-day I have asked for your hand?”
“When that day comes, believe me,” she said, and her delicious face took on a richer hue, “when that day comes there will be neither asking nor giving, we shall have come into our own.”
With this assurance Mr. Incoul was fain to be content, and, after another word or two, he took his leave.
For some time after his departure, Miss Barhyte stood thinking. It had grown quite dark. Before the window a street lamp burned with a small, steady flame, but beyond, the azure of the electric light pervaded the adjacent square with a suggestion of absinthe and vice. One by one the opposite houses took on some form of interior illumination. A newsboy passed, hawking an extra with a noisy, aggressive ferocity as though he were angry with the neighborhood, and dared it come out and wrestle with him for his wares. There was a thin broken stream of shop-girls passing eastward; at intervals, men in evening dress sauntered leisurely to their dinners, to restaurants, or to clubland, and over the rough pavement there was a ceaseless rattle of traps and of wagons; the air was alive with the indefinable murmurs of a great city.
Miss Barhyte noticed none of these things. She had taken her former seat on the sofa and sat, her elbow on her crossed knee, her chin resting in her hand, while the fingers touched and barely separated her lips. The light from without was just strong enough to reach her feet and make visible the gold clock on her silk stocking, but her face was in the shadow as were her thoughts.
Presently she rose and rang the bell. “Archibald,” she said, when the man came, and who at once busied himself with lighting the gas, “I want to send a note; can’t you take it? It’s only across the square.”
“I’ll have to be mighty spry about it, miss. The old lady do carry on most unreasonable if I go for anybody but herself. She has laws that strict they’d knock the Swedes and Prussians silly. Why, you wouldn’t believe if I told you how—”