"Well, I'll call again in a day or two, Hamish," and he went away along the gloomy streets, which were all ablaze with soft April sunshine, and yet to him had suddenly become darkened. For he saw at a glance all that this was like to do for him.
PART THE SECOND
I
The rare delight of his meetings with Margaret was at an end. Bluff Fortune had slammed the door in his face, and White-handed Hope had folded her golden wings and sat moping with melancholy mien.
He wandered into Kensington Gardens, but the daffodils swung their heads despondently, and the gorgeous masses of hyacinths made him think of funeral plumes on horses' heads.
He went on into the Park. She might be driving there, and he might catch glimpse of her. But she was not, and all the rest were less than nothing to him.
He found himself at Hyde Park Corner and back again at Kensington Gate. But the door was still closed in his face, and he longed for the sight of somebody else's as he had never longed before.
The post was of course open to him, but, at this stage at all events, he felt that the written word would be eminently inadequate and unsatisfying.
He wanted, when he approached that mighty question, to look into her eyes and see her answer in their pure depths before it reached her lips,—to watch the fluttering heart-signals in her sweet face and learn from them more than all the words in the world could tell. Letters were, at best, to actual speech but as actual speech would be to all that his heart-quickened eyes would discover if he could but ask her face to face.