They would have parted with a touch of the hand as they always did. They kissed on rising and on retiring, but at no other time of the day. Yet to-day she clung to his hand for a moment, her heart was filled with tenderness for him, longing and a desire to keep him that she was too unselfish to pander to.
"Why dear——"
There was something about her that he could not understand to-day, something in the tight hold of her hand, in the unwonted colour in her cheeks, the wonderful brightness in her eyes.
"It is nothing, dear, go—good-bye!" she said, yet as she spoke she lifted his hand and held it against her soft cheek, just for a moment and then would have turned, yet before she did, he caught her suddenly—why he did not know—it was a moment of passion irresistible, something that came so swiftly that he could not question it, could not understand it. He caught her and held her and kissed her and then quickly let her go and without a word went striding forth, conscious of a feeling of shame, as though he had offered her insult.
And she stood looking after him, her hands pressed against her breast, her eyes wide. Not once did he turn; had he done so perhaps he might have seen, might have understood the longing in her eyes, the hunger for the love that he never dreamed she needed.
Allan walked on quickly. A woman in moments of mental stress can find relief in tears, a man more usually in violent movement.
He was a little shaken, a little unnerved, greatly surprised at himself. Why had he done that, why had his heart leaped suddenly at the touch of her soft cheek on his hand, why had he—done what he had done? Yet, having done it, regretted nothing. It seemed to him that from that moment Kathleen held a new interest for him. He had regarded her as friend and companion—from this moment on he knew that she meant more than this to him.
Farmer John Patcham received him courteously, with a deference and respect that had nothing whatever of servility about it.
"'Tis a fine marning," he said, "and I be just going to have my usual lunch, Mr. Homewood, a very plain and simple lunch it be, just a glass of ale and a plum-heavy, very partial I be to plum-heavies and there's no one in all Sussex makes 'em better than my wife, so if you'll join me——"
Allan did. They sat in the somewhat stuffy little parlour, the window of which remained hermetically sealed, summer and winter, and drank good brown beer and ate those Sussex cakes that for some reason have never achieved the fame of the cakes of Banbury or the Buns of Bath.