After a moment he turned, grinding his heel into the earth. It was then that a voice called out above him, “Hello, Gerald!”
338He turned again and removed his straw hat. He and the lady leaning from the terrace looked at each other for the space of a few heart-beats with mechanical, constrained smiles. Then she asked:
“Aren’t you going to come in?”
Instead of making the obvious answer and setting about the obvious thing, he appeared to be debating the point within himself. At the end of his hesitation, he asked:
“Could I prevail upon you to give me five minutes in the garden?”
“Why, certainly,” answered Aurora, appreciating the fact that Estelle would be superfluous at the peace-making that must follow.
She went very lightly down the stairs. She could hear Estelle’s and Tom’s voices still in the dining-room. Instead of going out by the usual door, too near to their sharp ears, she turned with soft foot into the big ball-room and passed out through that.
The great oval mound of flowers spread its odoriferous carpet before the steps leading down from the house. She turned her back upon it and followed a path bordered with pansies and ivy till Gerald saw her and came to take her hand, saying:
“How good of you!”
“Well,” she sighed, put by the bliss of her relief into a mood of splendid carelessness as to how she, for her part, should carry off the situation,–looking after her dignity and all that. “How jolly this is! And you’re all right again, Gerald. You’re well enough to walk on your legs and come and tell me so. Yes, you’re looking quite yourself again. Well,”–she sighed again heartily,–“it’s good for sore eyes to see you. You’re sure now it’s all 339right for you to be out of doors after sunset? Hadn’t we better go in?”