His voice vibrated to some unlooked-for emotion, and Ann, hearing and dimly sensing the demand it held, was suddenly afraid, shrinking back into the reserves of her young, unconquered womanhood. She tried to withdraw her hand from his clasp.
Then, from somewhere above her bent head, she heard a low laugh, half tender, half amused.
“You shall tell me to-morrow, little Ann,” he said.
She felt his lips against her palm, and a minute later she was standing alone by the gate with the sound of Eliot’s receding steps coming faintly to her ears through the scented dusk.
CHAPTER XVII A SPRIG OF HELIOTROPE
The light of a pale young moon filtered in through the chinks of the blind and crept towards the bed where Ann lay tremulously awake, overwhelmed by the sudden revelation—which had come to her—the revelation of her love for Eliot Coventry.
Too unselfconscious to be much given to introspection, she had never asked herself whither the last few months had been leading her. But now, an hour ago, the touch of Eliot’s lips against her hand and the sudden, passionate demand in his voice had torn aside the veil and shown her her own heart.
With a shy, almost childlike sense of wonder, she realised that her love for him was not a thing of new or sudden growth. It had been slumbering deep within her, unrecognised and unacknowledged, ever since that moment when their eyes had first met across the Kursaal terrace at Montricheux. Like a little closed bud it had lain curled in her heart, to open wide when the sun kissed its petals.