Michael looked across at her with a strange smile.
“Thank you,” he said. “I shall not tell you how—though you know it. Nor shall I ever tell any other woman what I have told you. You will still let me come and see you?”
“You must come,” said Sara quickly. “I should miss you dreadfully if you didn’t. During these last weeks your visits have been my greatest pleasure. When I hear the front door bell ring I listen. And when I hear the pad of your crutch on the stairs I am happy, and I say to myself, ‘It is Michael.’”
It was the first time she had used his name. For a few moments Michael did not trust himself to speak. When he did his voice was light.
“I shall hate my crutch no longer,” he said, “since its sound has given you happiness. Do you know you have quite suddenly brought back faith to me. I thought it was dead. Now I will play for you again.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE PEACE OF THE RIVER
AFTER Michael had left, Sara went to the window and stood looking out at the trees on the Embankment. The heat of the summer had already caused their leaves to turn yellow.
Beyond them she could see the river. It always held a note of peace for her. Rivers and lakes had the power to speak to her. She loved their calm quietude, though she had seen lakes lashed to fury by the wind. But it was a different kind of anger from the anger of the sea. The cruelty of the sea hurt her—its restlessness, its turmoil, its never-ceasing demand for lives. Even when it was quiet it was treacherous. Its smiling surface was nothing but a lure, for it held terrible secrets in its heart.
But the quiet of the river always soothed her. She knew it in all its moods—under grey skies, and under blue skies, in the crimson and purple of sunset, in the amber grey and rose of dawn. She knew it at the full flood of its waters, and at ebbing tide. In all its moods she loved it, and she loved her house, yet she felt that she could not stay there much longer.