He made an abrupt movement as though the question, notwithstanding the absolute kindness of its utterance, had somehow an edge for him. The next moment he began to laugh.
"Why ask these impossible riddles? Has any man ever understood a woman? Let us dismiss the subject! And since you are here, ma belle reine,—you of all people—let us celebrate the occasion with a drink!—even if it be only tea!"
His eyes laughed into hers. The western light was streaming in across the music-room. They stood together in the turret beyond Saltash's piano, where she had found him pouring out wild music that made her warm heart ache for him.
She had come to him with the earnest desire to help, but he baffled her at every turn, this man to whom once in the days of her youth she had been so near. She could not follow the complex workings of his mind. He was too quick to cover his feelings. His inner soul had long been hidden from her.
Yet the conviction persisted that if any could pass that closed door that he kept so persistently against all comers, it would be herself. She had once possessed the key, and she could not believe that it was no longer in her power to turn it. He would surely yield to her though he barred out all beside.
Perhaps he read her thoughts, for the laugh died out of his eyes, melting into the old tender raillery that she remembered so well.
"Will you drink with me?" he said. "You have actually stooped to enter my stronghold without your bodyguard. Will you not honour me still further—partake of my hospitality?"
She smiled at him. "Of course I will have tea with you with pleasure,
Charlie. Didn't you realize I was waiting to be asked?"
"You are very gracious," he said, and crossed the room to ring a bell.
She remained in the western turret, looking out over the beech woods that blazed golden in the sun to the darker pine-woods beyond.