“Well, hardly that,” he answered slowly, as if there were something more to be said, which he did not say.
“And I do not give so much credit to Herr von Holzen as you suppose,” added Mrs. Vansittart, carelessly. “Some day you will have to fulfil your promise of taking me over the works.”
Roden did not answer. He was perhaps wondering when he had made the promise to which his companion referred.
“Shall we go home that way?” asked Mrs. Vansittart, whose experience of the world had taught her that deliberate and steady daring in social matters usually, succeeds. “We might have a splendid gallop along the sands at low tide, and then ride up quietly through the dunes. I take a certain interest in—well—in your affairs, and you have never even allowed me to look at the outside of the malgamite works.”
“Should like to know the extent of your interest,” muttered Roden, with his awkward laugh.
“I dare say you would,” replied Mrs. Vansittart, coolly. “But that is not the question. Here we are at the cross-roads. Shall we go home by the sands and the dunes?”
“If you like,” answered Roden, not too graciously.
According to his lights, he was honestly in love with Mrs. Vansittart, but Percy Roden's lights were not brilliant, and his love was not a very high form of that little-known passion. It lacked, for instance, unselfishness, and love that lacks unselfishness is, at its best, a sorry business. He was afraid of ridicule. His vanity would not allow him to risk a rebuff. His was that faintness of heart which is all too common, and owes its ignoble existence to a sullen vanity. He wanted to be sure that Mrs. Vansittart loved him before he betrayed more than a half-contemptuous admiration for her. Who knows that he was not dimly aware of his own inferiority, and thus feared to venture?
The tide was low, as Mrs. Vansittart had foreseen, and they galloped along the hard, flat sands towards Scheveningen, where a few clumsy fishing-boats lay stranded. Far out at sea, others plied their trade, tacking to and fro over the banks, where the fish congregate. The sky was clear, and the deep-coloured sea flashed here and there beneath the sun. Objects near and far stood out in the clear air with a startling distinctness. It was a fresh May morning, when it is good to be alive, and better to be young.
Mrs. Vansittart rode a few yards ahead of her companion, with a set face and deep calculating eyes. When they came within sight of the tall chimney of the pumping-station, it was she who led the way across the dunes. “Now,” she suddenly inquired, pulling up, and turning in her saddle, “where are your works? It seems that one can never discover them.”