With such thoughts in her—deep thoughts and long—she could wait quietly, and she veiled her feelings for him lest he should deem her of light mind and too easily to be won.
Now and again, induced perhaps by some adverse humour of body or atmosphere, a plaguy little fear would leap at her heart and nibble it with sharp teeth,—could it be that he had ties in the old life of which he had never dared to hint,—some other woman—to whom he was bound by honour or by law?
He had told her much, and yet not very much. Had he told her all? Did men ever tell all? He had told her much, but there was room in what he had not told for anything—for everything.
But surely he had one time said that he had left no ties behind him,—that he was alone.
If there should be anything of the kind it would explain his self-restraint, his quiet service, the looks he could not wholly check, the words he did not speak.
That his heart had gone out to herself she could not mistake. But that was not incompatible with ties elsewhere that might keep them apart.
But fears such as that could not hold her long. They had sprung up, in spite of her, once or twice when he had jumped up and left her alone, and gone out into the night to pace the beach. But when he returned, quieted and all himself again, they disappeared at once, and her heart was at rest. Wrong and this man had nothing in common, she said to herself. She felt as sure of his honour as of her own.
LII
"This weather cannot last much longer," he said, one night as they sat talking after supper; he with his pipe, which she never would permit him to sacrifice on her account, pronouncing the smell of it homely and comfortable, in spite of his apologies for the varied qualities of his tobacco. "We must be somewhere near the end of October."
"It is either the 21st or 22nd or 23rd," she said very definitely.