Clare began to think that the heat had hurt his head. And all the time, in a secret, shame-faced way, she was listening to his incoherent sentences and rough exclamations, and remembering them one by one, and every one. And she looked at his pale face, and saw the queer light in his blue eyes, and the squaring of his jaw—and then and long afterwards the whole picture, with its memory of words, hot, broken, and confused, meant earnest love in her thoughts. No man in his senses, wishing to play a part and produce an impression upon a woman, would have acted as he did, and she knew it. It was the rough, real thing—the raw strength of an honest man’s uncontrolled passion that she saw—and it told her more of love in a few minutes than all she had heard or read in her whole life. But while it was before her, alive and throbbing and incoherent of speech, it frightened her.
“Come,” she said nervously, “we mustn’t stay out here any longer, talking in this way.”
He stopped again, close before her, and his eyes looked dangerous for an instant. Then he straightened himself, and seemed to swallow something with an effort.
“All right,” he answered. “I don’t want to keep you out here in the heat.”
He faced about, and they walked slowly towards the house. When they reached the door he stood aside. She saw that he did not mean to go in, and she paused an instant on the threshold, looked at him gravely, and nodded before she entered. Again he bent his head, and said nothing. She left him standing there, and went straight to her room.
Then she sat down before a little table on which she wrote her letters, near the window, and she tried to think. But it was not easy, and everything was terribly confused. She rested her elbows upon the small desk and pressed her fingers to her eyes, as though to drive away the sight that would come back. Then she dropped her hands suddenly and opened her eyes wide, and stared at the wall-paper before her. And it came back very vividly between her and the white plaster, and she heard his voice again—but she was smiling now.
She started violently, for she felt two hands laid unexpectedly upon her shoulders, and some one kissed her hair. She had not heard her mother’s footstep, nor the opening and shutting of the door, nor anything but Brook Johnstone’s voice.
“What is it, my darling?” asked the elder woman, bending down over her daughter’s shoulder. “Has anything happened?”
Clare hesitated a moment, and then spoke, for the habit of her confidence was strong. “He has asked me to marry him, mother—”
In her turn Mrs. Bowring started, and then rested one hand on the table.