The frankness of Esmé’s nature was opposed to the rôle of dignified silence, which she assumed deliberately out of consideration for the man who had shown so plainly his objection to social amenities. She was resolved that unless he spoke to her she would not address him again.
The event of his venturing on a spontaneous remark was so improbable that it seemed unlikely that the silence between them would be broken. To sit daily at meals beside a person with whom the exchange of the ordinary commonplace is denied becomes embarrassing. His silent presence caused her to feel uncomfortable and unhappy. Had it been possible to do so without exciting remark she would have changed her seat.
Her old friend on her right helped her largely in this difficulty. He made himself particularly agreeable to his young companion. But his conversational efforts rendered the other man’s silence more marked; and the awkwardness of sitting down to breakfast without offering a friendly good-morning appalled her in view of the many breakfasts which must follow with increasing strain each morning during her stay.
The point which troubled her most in regard to her new line of conduct was the certainty that the man who had furnished her with the gratuitous information concerning Hallam would conclude that the frozen alteration in her demeanour was the result of his unsought confidence. Absurdly, she wanted him to know that this breaking off of all intercourse was on Hallam’s initiative and not hers. It was a little thing to trouble her; but it did trouble her exceedingly. She did not wish Sinclair to think that because of what he had told her she was treating with contempt a man for whom she felt no contempt in her heart—nothing but compassion.
In accordance with the arrangement that had been made the previous day she accompanied Sinclair down the kloof; but her pleasure in the excursion was not so keen as it had been in anticipation; she was prejudiced slightly against her companion. She suggested going in a party; but he refused to entertain the idea. He hated crowds, he said.
“I took a party down one day,” he explained, “and they just fooled about and dug up ferns. Desecration, I call it. The ferns were thrown away, of course. That’s what happens. People must pick things. I wonder why? Sheer destructiveness. I like to see things growing.”
He was helpful and agreeable during the walk; and his appreciation of everything when they descended into the green twilight of the kloof pleased the girl: she shared in his enthusiasm. She stood silent amid the cool, green restfulness of this shadowed place, and viewed with amazed eyes the wonder of its vegetation which grew in a tangled luxuriance of varying shades of green; particularly she noticed the long trailing moss which hung festooned from the trees over the stream; the longer trails of clinging vine that wound itself about every plant and tree and linked the whole together in an ordered and pleasing confusion. Huge boulders, lichen covered, stood out of the water which purled round them, and, with the brown trunks of the trees, struck the only separate note of colour in a scene that was wholly green and lit with a soft green light. The sun did not penetrate here through the massed foliage of the locked boughs overhead. There was no view of the sky. The stream wound in and out among the loose stones like a narrow footpath cut through the dense vegetation. Ferns grew rankly beside the water, in the water, in the crevices of the boulders, and in the rotting trunks of trees. Maidenhair ferns were everywhere with long succulent fronds, and the feathery leaves of the wild asparagus trailed gracefully above the banks.
Esmé gazed about her in silent wonder; and her companion stood beside her and watched her pleasure in the scene.
“Makes one feel good, doesn’t it?” he said.
She turned to him reluctantly. His voice had broken the quiet spell of the place and caught her back from enchantment to everyday things.