She said, with that touch of new maturity and decision that David found so touching and so amusing in little Gabrielle, that she would go up and sit with her mother, thus releasing Margret for an hour or two below stairs.
The room seemed to become blank, however, when she had gone quietly away, and David was surprised to find that the thought of her had become so habitual with him in the last few weeks that he was thinking of her still, as steadily as if that strange hour in the garden were the dream, and the Gay of his plan, the gracious Gay who had so many, many times promised him, in his thoughts, to marry him, were the reality.
He found himself restlessly making excuses to follow her upstairs. Was Aunt Flora going up to see Aunt Lily to-night? Later, Flora said, sombrely. Was it quite safe for Gabrielle up there alone with the invalid? Oh, quite. Poor Lily had not the strength of a baby, now.
After an endless time they went upstairs, to find that Margret had just come up, and Gay was ready to plead fatigue and slip away to bed. Aunt Lily was a mere colourless slip of flesh and blood, quiet upon smooth pillows now, with her gray hair brushed and pinned up neatly. Gay was kneeling beside her in the orderly, lamp-lighted room when David went in, with one of her beautiful hands clasping the yellowed old lifeless fingers. She got to her feet with no sign of embarrassment, and in another two minutes had disappeared for the night.
David saw a light in her transom, half an hour later, when he went to his room. She was probably quietly reading, he thought; discomfited, preferring the society of books to his own, after what had transpired this afternoon.
He felt disappointed and humiliated, he missed the thrilling dream that had kept him company for so long, and for a day or two he managed to persuade himself that it was because Gay had failed him. She had proved very much less satisfying than his thoughts of her; he had unconsciously been idealizing her all this time. He had thought of her as gracious, merry, provocative, responsive, and she had proved to be merely embarrassed and awkward.
“Well!” he said, going off to sleep, “That’s over—no harm done!” But he could not dismiss it. Again he said, almost aloud; “That’s over. No harm done!”
CHAPTER XIII
He plunged, the next morning, into work, going off to Keyport immediately after breakfast and returning late in the afternoon. The day was exquisite beyond words, the sea satiny blue, and there was real summer warmth in the sweet spring stillness of the air. David saw Gabrielle in the garden when he came back, and took his painting gear upstairs, determined not to make himself ridiculous in her eyes again. But a power stronger than himself immediately took him downstairs again. He walked, with an air of strolling, to the hollies, where she had been. But she was gone.
David now felt irrationally and without analysis that he must see her, and at once. He had nothing to say to her, and if he had, he might have waited until dinner-time brought them together. But he felt like a lost child, not seeing that figure in blue gingham—his eyes searched for it hungrily, swept each new vista; he felt actually sick with disappointment when moment after moment went by and there was no sign of her down the lane, on the cliff road, or among the rocks. He thought of nothing but the finding of her; Gabrielle in her blue gingham seated by a pool, running along with Ben—just to find her——