'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard us—you English—with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and passions, our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined the Guard—the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and feared for you, I'—she laughed again—'I even wanted to help you! How absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish—one of those unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to indulge!'
'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not allow you to say such things of yourself nor—of me!'
Valerie threw back her head with the slight haughty lift he knew so well.
'You are rather too certain of your own power,' she said.
'You say you remember that night?—not so well as I do? You think I am very sure of myself. And yet I have been mistaken on points that touch me close. I thought that night when I knew I might never see the morning—I dared to fancy that we—you and I—understood each other—a little.' He waited, but Valerie had turned away; her profile looked exquisite, but cold, against the dark shutter as she watched the driving snow. 'So I was the fool after all, you see!' he ended lamely.
According to the immemorial fashion of love, they understood and misunderstood each other alternately playing high and low at every other moment upon the wide gamut of feeling, touching faint sweet notes that would echo for ever.
Rallywood's self-control was giving way a little, and she instinctively felt her power and used it.
'I wonder what you really think of us behind that quiet alertness of yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I—understood you a little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right in the end.'
But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea that appealed to him.
'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'