Mr. Wedderburn considered her curiously.
“Well, you are young enough,” he said.
“Older than you think,” she smiled; her eyelids fell again.
They both became aware of a difference in the room; Mr. Wedderburn went to the window.
“The bells have stopped,” he said; he opened the casement with a reckless impatient gesture, and a cloud of snow was blown in on him. “Come here,” he said in a lowered voice. “See—’tis so dark ’tis like looking over the edge of the world—and the flakes go by like souls—millions of them—and all—I think lost—”
Delia crept up beside him, trembling and silent; he leaned his stately head against the mullions and stared out on to the utter dark; the drifting snow clung to the vivid velvet of his coat; Delia saw his diamonds rise and fall with the quickness of his breathing and felt her own heart beating thickly; a vague sense of unreality touched her like the chill of the outer air and made her shiver.
“Hark!” said Mr. Wedderburn.
The bells burst out again and the sharpness of their music was a pain; the snow went past in a slow rhythm of descent; Mr. Wedderburn turned and looked at Delia.
“Ah—it is cold—shut the window,” she said, and she closed her eyes and swayed as if she fainted inwardly.
But he stood motionless, the snow drifting over him, his hand on the open window; the mad, reckless blood of his doomed race rose in him; he spent his life in trying wild means of forgetting his great unhappiness and here, in the pale, pure face shrinking away from him, was one way of distraction; he was as picturesque in his thoughts as in his person and he imagined her soul, simple, white as the snow without, standing before him, waiting for a sign to flutter into his hand; he smiled gloomily; she was not the first to respond to the obvious attraction of his flaunting personality, but she had the novelty of a singular, gracious freshness, an almost childlike simplicity of demeanor; it was exquisite to think she knew nothing of him.