The schoolroom, that had once been the nursery, packed away at the very top of the house, was bathed with the rich evening glow. He caught her in his arms, held her, and she kissed him, passionately, with clinging, eager kisses. Then, with a little happy sigh, she released him.
The old shabby room, with its old shabby books, Charlotte Mary Yonge and Mrs. Ewing and Henry, and the Christmas Supplements on the walls and the old grate that seemed still to be sunk in happy reveries of roasted chestnuts and toffee and toast, reassured her.
“Oh, Phil!” she cried. “I thought I was never going to get to you!”
She looked at him, carefully, luxuriously, with all the happiness of possessing something known and proved and loved. Why, were it the ugliest face in the world, the oldest, shabbiest body, nothing now could change her attachment. That was why, with true love, old age and decay did not, could not matter—and here, after all, was her possession, as far from old age as anyone could be, strong and thick-set and with the whole of life before it! But he seemed tired and depressed. He was very quiet, and sat there close to her, holding her hand, loving her, but subdued, saying very little. He had changed. He was not now that eager, voluble figure that had burst through the fog on that first wonderful evening so long ago.
“Phil—you’re tired!” she said quickly, looking up into his eyes.
“Yes. I am rather,” he answered. “It’s been awfully hot. Was it very splendid?”
“The wedding?... No, horrid.... Just like any other, and I can’t tell you anything about it, because I didn’t notice a thing.”
But he didn’t ask her. He didn’t want to know anything about it. He only wanted to have her there. They sat quietly, very close to one another. Her terror and her loneliness left her. The Abbey clock boomed the hour, and a little clock in the room gave a friendly, intimate echo.
“Your mother’s asked me to go back to Garth with you,” he suddenly said.
Katherine remembered how triumphant she had been when, upon a certain earlier occasion, he had told her that. Now her alarm returned; her hand trembled on his knee.