As she moved softly about the room arranging flowers and books with supple, slender fingers—Jocelyn’s fingers were always busy, moving swiftly to their various ends—she thought for the hundredth time of the wording of the note that was folded into her dress—
“Jacopo will have told you what has happened. I could not come yesterday, nor to-day. I will be at the hotel to-morrow at half-past four. I must see you alone.—G. L.”
At half-past four! It was four now. The minutes seemed leaden-winged.
She wandered to the window, and stepped out on to the stone terrace where the sun beat fiercely. She felt its fiery touch upon her face, upon her arms and neck through the thin muslin of her dress, and her spirits rose insensibly. Those were right who worshipped the Sun! It was he who brought colour to the rose, song to the air, life to the blood! He who sailed high in the heavens to warm and cherish when the world was dark and dreary! She leaned against the window, looking up at the yellow roses trailing above her head, and humming to herself.
Nielsen, whom the servant had shown into the room unannounced, stood looking at her a long time. He was thinking that never in his life had he seen anything prettier than the line of her slender, rounded throat, and of her pointed chin thrust softly forward. Her lips were slightly parted in the act of singing, but he could not hear her. The light went out of her face as quickly as it had come; with a sigh she bent her head, and moved restlessly back into the room.
Nielsen stepped forward; he had seen the bright look upon her face in the streaming sunlight, the sudden cloud that passed over her eyes and the droop of her mouth; and when she came to him with a smile and some commonplace remark of greeting, he experienced a feeling of discomfiture, a sense of having hit up against something hard and impassable. What did he, with all his experience, know of women?—of this girl, upon whose face he had seen a moment before the stamp of life, and who veiled it from him impenetrably with a smile? What had he come to see her for? To offer her a warning? To do it delicately and diplomatically? Fool! when with the touch of her fingers upon his, cold and light though it was, his head was going round! He saw that he had come rather to tell her how he could never forget her, would follow her, until some day or other she cared for him as he cared for her! The idea that she was going away from him, out of his reach, that he would no longer be able to come and see her daily, when he wished—was suddenly and crushingly brought home to him, as he looked at her slender figure in its soft, grey dress, and at the little head poised so erect and so daintily upon it.
“Won’t you sit down?”
Again, the sense of being baffled, of encountering a barrier. Yes, he would sit down, many thanks!
“And how is the dear aunt? And we shall lose you to-morrow, everything that makes life endurable?” And so on, and so on, in purring tones rolling his r’s. It was such a habit of his to talk, that he went on uttering smooth commonplaces and looking unutterable things—feeling all the time that he would give the world for a moment of silence in which to steady himself, and find out exactly what he wished to say, and how to say it.
Jocelyn had seated herself at her piano with her face half turned over her shoulder towards him, and while she answered him her fingers touched the notes silently. His eyes fastened on them, the swift, silent fingers that seemed to be keeping him at bay.