His answer read:
“My dear Miss Prudence,—
“I was delighted to get your letter. It would be selfish on my part to say that I am rejoiced to know you feel dull; but at least I cannot express sincere regret since the admission is followed by what I have been hoping for ever since we parted—your permission to visit you again. I am coming immediately. I was only waiting for just this dear little letter.
“Yours very truly,—
“Edward Morgan.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Prudence when she read this letter, and bit her lip in vexation, her face aflame at the thought that she had taken the irrevocable step, and brought very close the moment for the great decision of her life.
She knew that he would ask her to marry him, that he would take her consent for granted; and, although in sending the letter she had decided upon taking this step, now that the thing was upon her she felt reluctant and afraid.
“You’ve done it now,” she told herself, for the purpose of stiffening her resolution. “You ought to have realised your doubts sooner. It is impossible to draw back.”
Impossible to draw back! The finality of the phrase gripped her imagination with the startled sensation of a lost cause. She had burnt her boats. The prospect ahead was not entirely lacking in fascination; but she wished none the less that some kind of raft might discover itself on which she could retreat conveniently if the alternative proved very distasteful. The thought of being kissed by Mr Morgan, as Major Stotford had kissed her, the idea of giving any man the right to so kiss her, filled her with sick apprehension. The whole process of love-making thrilled her with disgust.
She leaned from her window and looked out upon the glistening darkness of the wet November night, and her thoughts became detached from present complexities, and attuned themselves to memories that were becoming old. They were nearly two years old, but they wore the stark vividness of very recent things. She allowed her fancy to riot unchecked around these bitter-sweet memories of a romance which had started from slumber only to fall back again into sleep, a sleep no longer sound and reposeful but disturbed by haunting dreams, dreams that were elusive and disconnected, and which belonged to the might-have-been. There was no shrinking from these dreams; they floated before her mind arrayed in the gracious beauty of simple and sincere emotions. The thought of love, of passion even, in this connection, had no qualm of revulsion in it. To be held in strong arms a willing captive, to be kissed by lips to which her own responded, that was a different matter. There would be no sense of shame in that, only a great wonder and a vast content.
“Dreams! dreams!” Prudence murmured, and listened to the falling of the rain without—wet darkness everywhere, the dismal darkness of a winter world sodden with the sky’s incessant weeping.
She clenched her hands upon the wet sill, and felt the rain drops on her hair.
“He is out there in the sunshine,” she thought; “and I’m here in the dark and the rain alone. It is easy to forget when the sun shines always.”