When she looked up again she met Giles’s eyes. He stopped short in the act of stepping through the window, and she felt as if something were passing from him to her in that look. Without glancing again, she knew that he was threading his way towards her, and the colour began to come slowly into her cheeks. She plucked incessantly at a loose thread in her skirt, and talked nervously. When he came up she held out her hand to him with a smile; he took it silently in his, and stood close to her, without joining in the talk. She felt suddenly light-hearted, and began a gay and laughing discussion with the professor. They disputed upon the colouring of the Riviera. The professor, a short, bearded man, with a square figure, prominent blue eyes, and a red face, maintained that it was too vivid.
“Dere is no zoul in it, no veeling, nicht wahr?” he said, “everydings you zee at once—it is not inderesding.”
“Ah! But always to have the sun, and the beautiful clear sky, what does anything else really matter except that, Herr Schweitzer? Besides, there are the olives—isn’t there any soul in them?”
“Ach! The olives, dey are ingongruous, like a grey goat on an Idalian beasant. I like more de zcenes mit de bine woods, und de rivers vlowing, und to zee de beasts und de women in de vields.”
“Yes, I like that too, but I don’t feel as if I lived there, you know, as one does in the South.”
“Ach! Mein fraulein, you are English; like all de English you will eggzitement have. For me to dake his ztick and walk in de beaudiful woods und vields, und to zee nadure, und den berrhaps to rest, und drink a liddle beer, and walk again, dat is ’abbiness—ach!”
He beamed at her sentimentally through his spectacles. At this moment Mrs. Travis approached; she was greatly bored by her curate, and by the heat, and wished to depart. Giles, with a look of relief upon his face, went out to find their carriage; in spite of his yearning to be with Jocelyn, it tortured him to see her talking to other people. He had come to the party in the hope of finding her, proposing just to look at her, and to go away. As he put them into their carriage, her hand rested lightly on his arm, and she said—
“When are you coming over to see us, Giles?”
“To-morrow,” he answered, trembling all over. He did not take his eyes from her face, and when she looked back at him as the carriage drove away, she felt again as if something were passing between them.
“Au revoir!” she cried, waving her hand. All the way home she felt curiously light-hearted....