She laughed as she said it, and he laughed with her, a note of sheer joy at the absurdity of stopping to drink tea, when the time was so short.
“Miss Stoughton will expect us to take it,” he admitted. “It’s unthinkable that we shouldn’t bother about it. Can’t we pour it away somewhere, where it will do no harm? On the fire?”
“And risk putting it out? I can never remember how small an English fireplace is, in a house of this size, till I see one again. Really, I don’t think it would do you any hurt to take the tea. You’re not wholly strong yet.” And she quickly made and poured it.
“Anything to get it over,” he agreed, and took the cup from her hand, drank, and set it down. “Now!” he said, and sat down beside her. “Jane, I can’t believe it, yet. I’ve been haunting Charing Cross Station for days. I wanted to see you get off the train. I wanted to see you before you saw me, so I could look—and look—and look at you. It’s been so long to wait.... Well!” He quite evidently laid sudden and firm restraint on his own emotions—he didn’t mean to let himself get out of hand. “Tell me all about it. You can’t know how I want to hear.”
“What will you have first?”
“Begin at the beginning. Tell me—everything you must know I want to know about you. How it began—what came first—and what followed. And—most of all—where you are now.”
They never knew how the hours passed—three hours—while they sat before the fire in the little London drawing room and lived again the year and more that had separated them. But when at last Robert Black, looking in amazement at the watch upon his wrist, rose to go, he was in possession of that knowledge of Jane’s experience which had transformed him from a convalescent to a well man—or so it seemed.
He took both her hands in his, and stood looking down at her.
“I’m very certain that my ship doesn’t sail before Monday,” he said, “or I shouldn’t take the chance I am taking. Jane—I haven’t said a word of what is nearest my heart. I have a strange fancy that I want to say that word—to-morrow. Do you remember that to-morrow is——”
“Sunday. Indeed I do remember it. I have thought, ever since I knew that I was coming, that if I could just—be in London on a Sunday—with you——”