“Ella has promised me, and she will not go back on her promise. Whatever happens, whatever she learns.”
The man raised his eyes to the other’s face.
“Will you go back on your promise?” he asked huskily. “Whatever you learn?”
“I know,” said Dick simply.
Ella Bennett walked on air that day. A new and splendid colour had come into her life; a tremendous certainty which banished all the fears and doubts she had felt; a light which revealed delightful vistas.
Her father went over to Dorking that afternoon, and came back hurriedly, wearing that strained look which it hurt her to see.
“I shall have to go to town, dearie,” he said. “There’s been a letter waiting for me for two days. I’ve been so absorbed in my picture work that I’d forgotten I had any other responsibility.”
He did not look for her in the garden to kiss her good-bye, and when she came back to the house he was gone, and in such a hurry that he had not taken his camera with him.
Ella did not mind being alone; in the days when Ray was at home, she had spent many nights in the cottage by herself, and the house was on the main road. She made some tea and sat down to write to Dick, though she told herself reprovingly that he hadn’t been gone more than two or three hours. Nevertheless, she wrote, for the spirit of logic avoids the lover.
There was a postal box a hundred yards up the road; it was a bright night and people were standing at their cottage gates, gossipping, as she passed. The letter dropped in the box, she came back to the cottage, went inside, locked and bolted the door, and sat down with a workbasket by her side to fill in the hour which separated her from bedtime.