She smiled back at his swift urgency—then bent the primrose head in assent. O’Hara held back the curtains for her to pass through.
“To-morrow,” he told her, his eyes still lit with that incredulous wonder. “To-morrow is a great way off!”
III
“I’ll just wait here,” he said to the pretty maid. “I’m not dressed for a party. You might tell Mrs. Lindsay that—that when she’s not too busy, I’d like awfully to speak to her for a minute.”
“Very well, Mr. O’Hara.” Her voice had all the impersonal blankness of the well-trained servant, but once on the dark stairs she shook her glossy head dismally. She had come to know him well in the past weeks.
“The Saints preserve the poor man, it’s fit for a long rest in a pine box he’s looking, and that’s no lie at all! And it’s my fine lady upstairs that is after painting shadows black as the pit under his poor eyes, or my name’s not Bridget O’Neill. It’s a wicked world entirely, and that’s what it is!”
O’Hara stood watching the door through which she had vanished. In a minute—in five minutes—in ten minutes—someone else might stand framed in that door; he could not tear his eyes from it, but stood staring, hands thrust deep into his pockets, very quiet, with fever playing behind the tense stillness of his face. The painted clock on the mantel chimed the hour out twelve times, each stroke a mocking peal of laughter. His shoulders sagged abruptly and he turned from the door. What was the use?—she wasn’t coming. She would never come again.
He crossed to the mantel slowly, noting all the studied grace with desperate tenderness. To whom could it belong but Lilah, the little room that he loved, demure and gay—intimate as a boudoir, formal as a study? Those slim hands of hers must have placed the bright flowers in the low bowls of powdered Venetian glass, and lined the bookcases with deep-coloured books, set the small bright fire burning with pine cones, and lighted the waxen candles that were casting their gracious light all about him. The satin-wood desk looked austere enough, with its orderly stacks of paper, its trays of sharpened pencils and shining pens—but the lace pillow in the deep chair by the fire was a little crumpled, there was a half-burnt cigarette in the enamelled tray, and trailing its rosy grace shamelessly across a sombre cushion was a bit of chiffon and ribbon, the needle still sticking in it. It could not have been so long ago that she had been here; all the dainty disorder spoke eloquently of her still.
Oh, thrice-accursed fool that he had been to risk even for a second the happiness that for weeks had been fluttering closer to him—the happiness that only a day before had almost closed its shining wings about him! They had been looking at some of her old snapshots of a motor trip through Ireland, laughing together in the enchanted intimacy which they had acquired over the begoggled, be-veiled, and beswaddled small creature that she assured him was her exquisite self—and then she had come upon a snapshot that was only too obviously not Ireland. It was of a vine-hung terrace, with the sea stretching far out in the distance, and the sunlight dappling through onto the upturned face of a man—quite a young man, in white flannels, swinging a careless tennis racquet and laughing in the sun. For a minute her sure fingers had faltered; there, very deliberately, she had picked it up, tearing it into small pieces, dropping them deftly into the dancing fire.
“Here’s one of us having tea by the road,” she had continued evenly, but O’Hara had not even heard her. His mind was far away, sick with apprehension and suspicion, all the old dim terrors suddenly rampant.