“And you flatter yourself that will not give a handle for talk!”
Wareham had been surprised that she had said nothing of the sort before; he was conscious at the same time that if it had been Millie, the fear would not have struck her.
“When they know the facts, they will see there was nothing else for us to do.”
“They won’t know facts. One fact will be sufficient for them, and to that they will hold on as a dog to a bone. Never mind. I have gone through as much before.”
“When?” Wareham asked jealously.
“Oh, not with this sort of experience. This is new to me. But I have served as a bone so often that I am used to the worrying. Don’t let us talk of it now. I want to drink in my new enjoyment, to develop my new sense. Look at the drifting shadow on that hill, and the splendour of the snow. But it is the water, the water that fascinates me. I am going to watch it.”
He accepted this as a hint that he was not to speak, and the turmoil in him was not sorry for silence which left time for many voices to have their say. This hint of Anne’s that the world would make her suffer for what his carelessness had brought upon her, carried with it an almost unendurable sting. Under other circumstances he would have said to her, if not that hour, to-morrow, “I love you. Be my wife.” But his duty to Hugh? Doubly bound, as he was, by the promise of his letter to abstain from any step until the answer had come, could he fling it to the winds, and forswear himself? The letter to which he looked for deliverance was but tightening his bonds. He was swayed this way and that, now swung low by such fretting thoughts, now conscious of mounting to heights of bliss in the warm fresh air, with the mountains and the water around, and Anne sitting close to—touching him. She said presently—
“We are the only thinking creatures in sight, and the world looks very big. Does it make you feel small or great?”
“It dwarfs one, doesn’t it?”
“It seems to me as if I had seen it all before, and I have been trying to think where. I believe now that it was when I was a child, and sat solitary, reading Sinbad the Sailor. Perhaps there was some old picture, for certainly this takes me back to that.”