"I think we'll cross now," she said, trying not to feel hurt. "It may be cooler under the trees."
He gave her his arm across the road; and as they threaded their way, still arm in arm, through the saunterers, Julia Cavendish, bowing to various acquaintances, forgot her hurt in sheer maternal pride--a pride which had not diminished by the time that James Wilberforce came over to detain them from strolling.
Watching those three make their way through the sunlit crowd, Hector Brunton's wife felt the social sense desert her.
This creature, dressed so like its fellows that its fellows scarcely turned to regard it, was her man, her Ronnie. He, and he alone among the crowd, could move her to emotion. She could feel the limbs under her silk frock trembling to his approach. And suddenly, desperately, she hated the crowd; seeing it a living barrier between them. If only Ronnie could take her up, there and then, in his arms; if only he could carry her away, away from all these futile people. All the people about her grew blurred, unreal. She could see clearly only one face, the serious blue-eyed face of her man.
"How do you do?" said the voice of Julia Cavendish. And a moment afterwards, as she and Ronnie shook hands, reality and social sense alike came back to the mind of Aliette Brunton.
She found herself sitting pleasantly in the park, surrounded by pleasant people. She knew a great many of these people: but best of all she knew the man beside her. "Poor Ronnie!" she thought. "He doesn't know what to say for himself. He feels awkward. It is rather an awkward moment. I'd better make conversation." And she began to make conversation in her calmest, most charming social manner, with Ronnie's mother, inquiring about her health.
"Oh, but I'm really quite well," protested Julia. "A little overworked, perhaps. At least, so the doctors say. Personally I haven't much faith in doctors. But I'm taking their advice, and knocking off for a month or so."
"Does that mean that we aren't to expect a novel this autumn?"
"I'm afraid so." The authoress laughed to herself. It was so like "the public" to imagine that novels were written in a few months, between May and July, for publication in the autumn.