Her soft eyes beamed, and her smile met his in the way. “Halfway House?” she said, asking.
He nodded. “Halfway House, we’ll put it still.”
Duplessis said nothing at all; but fixed her with his knit brows. A good ear might have heard three hearts beating. I think that Bingo’s did, for he nozzled in Mary’s hand.
She let him gently down, stooped over him, kissed his head, whispered in his ear. Then, rising to her assize, with a look divinely mild and a gesture of confidence which brought tears into one pair of eyes, she put her hand in Senhouse’s, and stood by his side.
Duplessis stiffened and looked at the pair of them. “I take your answer,” he said, bowed to her, and walked down the hill. Bingo, sitting sagely on his haunches, suddenly yawned.
Shyly they turned to each other, shyly kissed. Senhouse kissed her twice, then threw his head back and laughed his joy to the skies. “Oh, wonder of the world!” he cried, and took her to his heart.
Here’s for the last of her. In the train, on their way to London and Löffner, Senhouse was commenting upon what lay before them: the Caucasus, the Schwarzwald. What would she do in the Caucasus, for example? That was easy. “I shall sit in the door of the tent, waiting for you,” she told him. In the Black Forest? What else?
He believed her. “We are to leave Halfway House, then?” and then he looked out of the window at the rolling hills of Wilts. “At any rate, here I am a bondslave—yoked by Baden for five years. Make what you will of it.”
She said nothing; she was always slow of speech with her betters when they talked above her head. But she pondered the saying, it was clear, for presently she picked up his hand, stooped to it, and kissed it; then, lowering her head, put his arm over her neck, and looked at him from below it. It was a pretty act, one of her prettiest. He saw the beauty of her gentle rebuke.