“That's it!” The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more than once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a dormant fancy for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend contentedly among the deserted garden paths. He studied her hair especially, wondering why it was that the little tender flecks of white attracted him so. At dinner he secretly tried to rouse in himself the same desire to stroke the gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed, and ornamented with jet, of the woman opposite him, whose hair, somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a great vogue among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely too effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he decided.
He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance that charmed him particularly—the feeling of an almost double existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
“I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think,” he said, a little awkwardly. “I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think—is that the way she looks at it?”
“Mary?” said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. “Yes, I suppose so. Why?”
The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
“Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction.
“I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply. “Is there—was there ever anybody else?”
For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.