Beauty Ethel Vernon had in its most provoking, most illusive form. It came and went like the scent of a flower, left her passive and unpersuading, or lit her radiantly as a kindled lamp.
Even the shape of her spread skirts in the chair beneath him had in its vagueness something, some soft glow of sense, which made it expressive, and which made it hers. And he was anxious for peace, for peace at any price, from such a needless strife. What he had to tell her would be hard enough any way; but it was, at all events, something with the dignity of fate. He could not speak of it while fighting this little foolish fit of outraged pride, and he would not speak of it while his tidings might seem to be touched with the malice of his punishment. For one moment he was tempted to let this idle quarrel grow into a cause of rupture—so easy with an offended woman—and thus be spared speech at all. It would be easier, more considerate for her, inclination told him, and ah! so acceptably easier and more considerate for himself. But the temptation was not for long. In all his unprofitable vacillations he had shirked nothing to which he had set his name. The only chance to get square with folly was, he knew, by paying the price of it, and the one gain possible in this worst of his blunders seemed to be its pain. He would go through with that.
Yet, though he had his chance that evening, had it thrust upon him, he did not take it. There is a limit even to one's appetite for pain.
But he made peace, having swallowed his scolding and admitted that the ways of men were mad. The talk turned to easier topics, and he looked with less apprehension at the silken shadow in the chair.
Then, with a sudden air of remembrance, Ethel put the question which had clung for hours to the end of her tongue.
"Oh! by the way, am I to congratulate you?"
"Well, I don't know," he said. "About what?"
"Oh, that's absurd!" she exclaimed with a nervous laugh: "Isn't there a Miss Nevin?"
"Two or three, I daresay," he conceded.
"Miss Persse only mentioned one," she said, looking keenly at the dark silhouette of his figure perched on the iron trellis among the stars. "But she wrote that you could tell us a good deal about her."