But Esmé did not sleep. She lay awake in the hot stuffy darkness of her little room, which the kitchen stove abetted the sun in keeping hot by day, while the warm slates of the too adjacent roof prevented any appreciable decrease in temperature during the night—lay awake with her mind filled with the thought of one man, and her imagination afire with the memory of splashes of moonlight on a heaving mass of water that stretched away endlessly and laved the moonlit, rock-strewn beach of a little bay along the coast. Then, with the dawn, she fell asleep and dreamed of the moonlight and of Paul Hallam.
Book Two—Chapter Sixteen.
From dreaming of Hallam at night and thinking of him in the daytime, Esmé arrived at a stage of almost incredible longing to see him again. Letters did not satisfy her. She wanted to hear his voice speaking to her, wanted to feel his presence, wanted, above all, to discover whether the months had changed him, and if the lapse of time had decreased his kindly feeling for her in any way. His letters no longer referred to the possibility of meeting: they became more formal in tone as time went by.
Soon after her tennis victory he wrote congratulating her on the event. She had not written to him on the subject; his information had been gleaned from the papers.
“I see you have been distinguishing yourself on the tennis courts,” he wrote. “Why do you leave me to discover the tale of your triumphs from the newspapers? I prefer to hear of these things first hand. The news furnished a further link with the old Zuurberg days. I recall how you practised with Sinclair then. So you keep hold on the thread of that acquaintance also?”
It occurred to Esmé that this circumstance had displeased him. She wished that she had written to him about the tournament and her part in it. It did seem a little odd, when she came to think of it, that she had suppressed this piece of news.
His letter was brief; and contained very little news of personal interest. It read as though it had been written with an effort, and not because he wanted to talk to her. A first fear that he might weary of the correspondence gripped her. If he ceased to write she would be desolate. His letters had come to mean so much to her: they caught her away from the dreary routine of her days; they coloured life for her warmly, kept her interest on the alert. Giving music lessons endlessly through the long, hot days, returning to the stuffy overcrowded little house where numberless small duties constantly demanded her attention, was not an existence calculated to add romance to life. She had grown weary of these things. The blood in her veins was astir like the sap in the trees in the springtime. Love budded in her heart; it only awaited a sign to burst into flower.
There were times when she fancied she read in Hallam’s letters an intimation that he wanted her. He spoke often of his loneliness, and made reference to the happiness of their time together. But the months went by and he did not come, and into his letters crept a new note of reserve. Then followed a period of silence, after which he wrote from a totally new address and begged for news of her. She allowed herself twenty-four hours for reflection; then she replied to his letter in the old friendly vein.