“Don’t ask me,” she said briskly, “because I won’t tell. It’s nothing to you; it never can be anything, whether I’m glad or sorry.”
“You mustn’t say that. In a perfectly frigid and disinterested way you may surely be sorry that your critic, the venomous critic who could be so useful in stinging you to better work, will be too far away to sting by Tuesday morning.”
She suddenly bit her lip.
“That’s unfair of you,” she said rather tremulously. “When I say I don’t wish to feel glad or sorry, you should try to feel the same.”
“Very well. But tell me, will you treat me as you did before? When I write, as I must write about this MS., will you leave me without an answer?”
Suddenly the girl looked up into his face, looked up with such a glory of hidden meaning in her great eyes as set his heart beating very fast. Looking at him still, and blushing a rosy pink, she pointed to the roll of paper in his hands.
“Perhaps when you’ve read that you won’t ask for an answer,” she said. “Good-bye, Mr Bayre.”
She held out her hand. Scarcely master of himself, fighting to keep down the torrent of passion which boiled and surged within him, he pressed her fingers to his lips, secure in the knowledge that, whether the feeling were transitory or not, he had excited in her an emotion such as good Monsieur Blaise could never have done.
“Good-bye, good-bye,” murmured he, hoarsely. “Listen, Olwen—”
But she would not listen. Cleverly waiting for her opportunity, she abruptly tore her hand away and fled towards the house, taking the way of the courtyard, where, for fear of the servants’ eyes, he could not follow her.