But Joan could make no answer, only she turned from him and ran up the steps; the bunch of violets lay where she had dropped them when he caught her hands, but neither of them noticed it. He saw her face for a second against the lighted hall and a little to his dismay he could see that she was crying. Then she had gone and the door shut to behind her quickly.
Dick waited about for a little, but she made no sign, and finally he turned rather disconsolately away. One thought, however, was left to comfort him through the night, the memory of her soft, yielding hands, the glad surrender of her lips.
CHAPTER XXIV
| "Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring One sigh back, bid one smile revive? Can God restore one ruined thing, Or he who slays our souls alive Make dead things thrive?" |
A. C. Swinburne.
Early morning brought Joan a letter from Dick. She had hardly slept all night. Once she had got up, determined to write him; the truth would look more cold and formal in a letter, but her courage had failed her, and instead she had sat crouched over the table, her body shaken with a storm of tears. Then Fanny had come in, an after-supper Fanny, noisy and sentimental, and she had had to be helped to bed, coughing and explaining that "life was good if you only knew how to live it." Joan had crept back to her own bed once the other girl had fallen asleep, and she had lain with wide eyes watching the night turn from blackness to soft grey, from grey to clear, bright yellow. There were dark shadows round her eyes in the morning, and her face was white and strained-looking.
"Dear Heart," Dick had written:
"Is it cheek to begin a letter like that to you? Only after last night I seem to know that you love me and that is all that really matters. I am coming to 6, Montague Square, on Tuesday afternoon at five o'clock to get my answer. Doesn't that sound precise? I would like to come to-day, but I won't because I don't want to hurry you. Oh, dear heart, I love you!—I have loved you for longer than you know of just at present. That is one of the things I am going to explain to you on Tuesday,
"Yours ever,
"Dick Grant."