Julia smiled radiantly. “I couldn’t think of anything but you for more than a minute if I would. That was one thing that terrified me at night—when I had time to think— I had switched off with a vengeance! The past seemed blotted out. I wonder! I wonder!”
“I don’t. And I never saw a mortal woman look so happy. Your faculty of living in the moment is a grand asset, my dear. Ten months— Good lord! It takes all of that time to establish a residence in Nevada, and all the rest of it. However— Well, let us go for a walk in the woods.” He glanced about with a quickening breath. “Blessed spot! We’ll come back to it one of these days.”
XII
“It shows how much in love we are that we don’t mind this luncheon,” said Tay, who made a face, nevertheless. They had decided to remain away from the hotel all day, and were fortifying themselves at the inn on the lake. The meal was the usual one of watery veal, fried potatoes, and pastry. “I remember eating ‘kalb’ when I was in Germany before until I choked. Can any one explain why there are more calves in Germany than anywhere else on the face of the globe? You don’t see so many cows. The offspring must arrive in litters like pigs.”
“And the German, true to his creed, is furious if you flout his commonest staple.” Julia smiled, but, in truth, her mind was deeply perturbed, and she spoke mechanically. There had been no more love-making, for guests and peasants had met them at every turn of the woods. Her Hindu master had once told her that profound as were the suggestions he had given her, and systematic as was the control she had been taught to acquire over herself, either might suffer interruption unless she lived in India for many years longer. A violent awakening of the primal emotions, the assault of a mind and nature, temporarily, at least, stronger than her own, and that devil that lives in the subconsciousness would sit on his hind legs and chuckle.
During the hours that had succeeded those moments of unquestioning surrender on the lake, her thirty-four years with their highest accomplishment had crept back, and she had ceased forever to feel eighteen. The immediate future rose before her like a black wall pricked out with menacing fingers. There was no question as to where her duty lay for the moment, as to what she must accomplish before she could think of happiness. All the steel in her nature had reasserted itself, her brain was cold and keen. She would put an end to the present state of affairs this very day. But how? How?
She continued pleasantly.
“Perhaps it would have been better to go back to the hotel.”
“Not much. The hotel is associated with three evenings of fruitless manœuvrings to get you alone in one of those corners. Besides, Lady Dark may have recovered. I’ll take no chances. You are to be mine alone for an entire day.”
“We could stay a few days longer.”