“No, you are right,” she said. “We are all fools in our idle talk about the past; wreathing it with flowers which never grew, and turning it into a fetish. It is pathetic, after all,” she added musingly. “And I don’t think that the future holds me as it does you. Perhaps I am too unimaginative—”
“With your sympathy? Never!”
“But I believe I find more satisfaction in the present.”
The words were spoken gravely, with a quiet which pleaded against any accusation of coquetry, had such an accusation crossed his mind. But he would have flung it from him as an infamy. Was ever man so tried!
The hour was there, and the woman; he, close to her, heart leaping to meet her heart, and no word permissible, possible! The trial was, as he had dreaded, almost beyond his strength. To have to answer her with cold words. And what woman would not resent such an answer! He dared not even look, since the look he must have given, wanting words, would be an insult. He sat mute, downcast.
Anne waited, expectant.
When no answer came her breath quickened. Her glance flew to Wareham, and she beheld only a wretched drooping head. Had she so utterly deceived herself that the passion she had imagined was but a sham, a mockery? Here, when no obstacle stood between, were they parted by his own want of will? She had felt that with him by her side, urging, sweeping her along, she might have yielded and turned her back upon her world’s prize, but—a reluctant lover!
Pride stormed, yet something softer held it back. She looked intently at him, trying to pierce to the truth. That he was moved she saw. He could not be indifferent. What withheld him? She sent out another feeler.
“Mr Wareham, you look as if what I said had displeased you. What is there at fault? One must know one’s sins to mend them.”
He said in a voice strained because it tugged for freedom—