The thought of this woman measuring with grateful wonderment the magnitude of a thing which had no existence, but in which he had brought her to believe, wrung him with a keen distress.
And in that sharp moment of shame and pity he came very near loving her; came near enough, at any rate, to dedicate the future to her illusion.
As he knelt before her on the sand, offering her a tea-cup in both his hands as though it were some sacrifice to an idol, he realized, by the glance which accepted both the humour and the service, what a big thing he had in hand. It was big enough even, so he found before long, to hide his own immense disappointment, which shrank into a small affair beside that which she must never be allowed to feel.
He had received his discomfiture from a false trust in Fate, but hers would come from a false trust in him.
So Maurice reflected as he watched Miss Nevern trying to persuade herself that cake on such an occasion was as easy to consume as cake on any other. In that, however, despite an excellent intention, she did not succeed; and her failure, absurd as it might sound, lit in him a pride of responsibility which her "I love you" had not. Here, at any rate, was an unequivocal effect; beyond evasion he was chargeable with this; and no priestly sacrament could have so pledged his allegiance as that little dryness of her throat. She set down her half-emptied cup with the prettiest pretence of satiety, a pretence which Caragh, with the hot thirst of a wound upon him, and having already drained the tea-pot, felt it best became him to ignore.
The wind, which had died at mid-day, freshened in the shadows of the September evening, and ruffled the flat face of the water into one rich dark hue.
Along the northern shore of the bay the shade of the bluff had fallen, and made a leaden edging to the sea.
Southward the low sun blazed, a dull rose-red, against the scarp of cliff, and turned the further waters and the dim head-lands beyond them to a wine-dipped purple.
"It's as solemnly gorgeous as you could well have it," Maurice affirmed as he hauled in the boat, "and we're going out of this spiny harbour under all sail to show we take the display in a proper spirit."
There was something so boyishly absurd in his determination, that Lettice, too numb with happiness to be determined about anything, went with a sigh of abdication into the bow, and leaning over the stem-post, with her fingers through the lower cringle in the luff, called the course with the quick decision of a river pilot.