He kissed each hand gently, and released them. He could not speak.
She went swiftly from him through the trees.
"May God bless her," said Stephen. "May God in heaven bless her."
CHAPTER X
"Thine were the weak, slight hands
That might have taken this strong soul, and bent
Its stubborn substance to thy soft intent."—William Watson.
It was hard on Stephen that when he walked into a certain drawing-room the following evening he should find Anne there. It was doubly hard that he should have to take her in to dinner. Yet so it was. There ought to have been a decent interval before their next meeting. Some one had arranged tactlessly, without any sense of proportion. Though he had not slept since she left him in the garden, still it seemed only a moment ago, and that she was back beside him in an instant, without giving him time to draw breath.
She met him as she always met him, with the faint enigmatical smile, with the touch of gentle respect never absent from her manner to him, except for one moment last night. He needed it. He had fallen in his own estimation during that sleepless night. He saw the sudden impulse that had goaded him into an offer of marriage—the kind of offer that how many men make in good faith—in its native brutality—as he knew she had seen it. When he first perceived her in the dimly-lighted room, and he was aware of her presence before he saw her, he felt he could not go towards her, as a man may feel that he cannot go home. Home for Stephen was wherever Anne was, even if the door were barred against him.
But after a few minutes he screwed his "courage to the sticking-place," and went up to her.