“Is that you?” he said to a bush, for the garden was 197 in semi-darkness. Then the lantern’s flash met him, and he saw the Egyptian in the summer-seat.
“At last!” she said, reproachfully. “Evidently a lantern is a poor door-bell.”
“What is it?” Gavin asked, in suppressed excitement, for the least he expected to hear was that she was again being pursued for her share in the riot. The tremor in his voice surprised her into silence, and he thought she faltered because what she had to tell him was so woeful. So, in the darkness of the summer-seat, he kissed her, and she might have known that with that kiss the little minister was hers forever.
Now Babbie had been kissed before, but never thus, and she turned from Gavin, and would have liked to be alone, for she had begun to know what love was, and the flash that revealed it to her laid bare her own shame, so that her impulse was to hide herself from her lover. But of all this Gavin was unconscious, and he repeated his question. The lantern was swaying in her hand, and when she turned fearfully to him its light fell on his face, and she saw how alarmed he was.
“I am going away back to Nanny’s,” she said suddenly, and rose cowed, but he took her hand and held her.
“Babbie,” he said, huskily, “tell me what has happened to bring you here at this hour.”
She sought to pull her hand from him, but could not.
“How you are trembling!” he whispered. “Babbie,” he cried, “something terrible has happened to you, but do not fear. Tell me what it is, and then—then I will take you to my mother: yes, I will take you now.”
The Egyptian would have given all she had in the world to be able to fly from him then, that he might never know her as she was, but it could not be, and so she spoke out remorselessly. If her voice had become hard, it was a new-born scorn of herself that made it so.
“You are needlessly alarmed,” she said; “I am not 198 at all the kind of person who deserves sympathy or expects it. There is nothing wrong. I am staying with Nanny over-night, and only came to Thrums to amuse myself. I chased your policeman down the Roods with my lantern, and then came here to amuse myself with you. That is all.”