The General had left his gloves on the table. Estella took them up and appeared to be interested in them. ‘Perhaps a lifetime,’ she suggested.
‘I ask no less, señorita.’
‘Then you ask much.’
‘And I give all—though that is little enough.’
They spoke slowly—not bandying words but exchanging thoughts. Estella was grave. Conyngham’s attitude was that which he ever displayed to the world—namely, one of cheerful optimism, as behoved a strong man who had not yet known fear.
‘Is it too little, señorita?’ he asked.
She was sitting at the table and would not look up—neither would she answer his question. He was standing quite close to her—upright in his bright uniform, his hand on his sword—and all her attention was fixed on the flowers which had called forth the General’s unspoken admiration. She touched them with fingers hardly lighter than his.
‘Now that I think of it,’ said Conyngham after a pause, ‘what I give is nothing.’
Estella’s face wore a queer little smile, as of a deeper knowledge.
‘Nothing at all,’ continued the Englishman. ‘For I have nothing to give, and you know nothing of me.’