“May I kiss you?” he asked.
Instinctively she drew back, and then, as though regretting the impulse which had moved her to refuse his request, lifted her face and allowed him to kiss her lips. He dropped her hand then, and turned and walked beside her towards the house.
“You can’t think what it means to me,” he said, “to be home again—and with you. I’ve had you in my thoughts, dear, every day. Why did you suddenly cease writing, Esmé?”
“I don’t know,” she answered shyly, and ran up the steps on to the stoep and entered the house through the drawing-room window.
He followed more slowly. His gaze, travelling round the pretty room, fell on his own photograph in uniform on the mantelpiece. He had sent her the photograph from England, and it pleased him to see it there. From the photograph his eyes went to her face and rested there, smiling and confident. She stood facing the light, looking shy and a little overcome at seeing him. Although she had been expecting him she felt oddly unprepared. Everything seemed to have changed with his appearance. He loomed large and substantial in the forefront of her thoughts, a person to be reckoned with, no longer the vague figure which had hovered indistinctly amid the confusion of her mind. Deliberately she moved to the sofa and sat down, and the dog came and lay at her feet. Sinclair seated himself beside her and played with the dog’s ears.
“I’ve a feeling,” he said, without looking at her, “that all this is unreal. It’s been a sort of make-believe with me that I was with you over there. I’ve talked with you, told you things in dumb show, often. I’ve pretended that you were present and could hear and respond. Now I’m half afraid to look at you for fear you’ll vanish. Absurd, isn’t it?”
“Poor dear!” she said, and touched his hand gently. He looked up then and smiled at her.
“You know you haven’t altered a bit since the days when we began our friendship amid the heights.”
“Ah!” she said, and the light in her eyes faded. “I feel as though I had no connection with that girl at all. It’s not only the years which alter us, George. You’ve been through experiences; they’ve changed you. Both of us look on life more seriously now. We were boy and girl in those old days of which you speak. I don’t care to look back.”
“I don’t wish you to look back,” he said; “I want you to look forward—with me. Esmé, you know what my hope is? I’ve besieged you for years. Can’t you give me a different answer, dear? I’ve waited so long. It seems to me we are both of us rather lonely people. Why won’t you end all that, and make me happy?”