“N—no, not exactly, but you made me drop my needle. I thought you were at Portsmouth!”
“So I was. But that isn’t five thousand miles off. I came back this morning.”
Mabin said nothing. She had not seen him for a fortnight,—not, in fact, since the morning when he had met her on the seashore, and when he had applauded her resolution of sleeping in the room in which Mrs. Dale had had her bad dream. He had been called away suddenly on the following day, and had therefore heard nothing of Mabin’s adventure.
“Haven’t you got any news for me? I had rather expected a budget.”
Now Mabin had a budget for him, and had been looking forward most anxiously for his return, that she might confide in him some of the suspicions, the surmises, which filled her brain by day, and even kept her awake at night. But as usual with events long looked forward to, this return of Rudolph’s had not taken place as she expected, and she found herself in a state of unreadiness to meet him.
In the first place, she felt so ridiculously excited, so absurdly glad, that all the things she had been storing up in her mind to tell him dwindled into sudden insignificance. What did they matter, what did anything matter just now, except that Rudolph had come back, and that she must try not to let him guess how glad she was?
“Yes,” she said deliberately, after a short pause, looking across the clover field to the sea, and carefully choosing another needle, “I have plenty to tell you. I had it all ready, but—but you came up so suddenly that you have scattered all the threads of the story, and now I don’t remember where to begin.”
“I’m so awfully sorry. First you say I make you lose your needle, and then I scatter your threads. I’m afraid you think me in the way.”
No answer.
“Must I go?”