He looked at me uncertainly.
"Did she say that in her letters?" he asked.
"Yes. She had sent her lover away, you see, and—there was nothing else in life."
"And she longed for the days to pass silently?"
"She stayed out here as much as she could—to keep from hearing the clock in the hall," I told him. "The chime shamed the unholy prayer on her lips, she said—and the sound of the ticking reminded her of her heart's wearying beats."
"Of their hearts' wearying beats, you mean," he exclaimed, and a quick look of pain which darted into his face showed me that he comprehended. Then, for the first time, I began to grasp what a lover he would make! Before this time I had been absorbed with thoughts of him as a beloved.
Suddenly my hat began to feel intolerably heavy, and my gloves intolerably hot. I tampered fumblingly with the pearl clasp at my left wrist, and drew that glove off first. Maitland Tait was watching me. He saw my hand—my bare ringless hand. He stared at it as if it might have been a ghost, although it looked fairly pink and healthy in the warm glow of the noonday sun. Even the little pallid circle on the third finger was quite gone.
"Grace——" he said.
"Yes?"
"Does this mean that you're—you're——"