She sat staidly under his gaze, not aware at the moment that his steel-blue eyes searched her avidly for a hint of more than he stated. “So far as I am concerned—certainly,” she said. “I shall never unlock any cupboards.”
“Better to burn the contents, perhaps,” he laughed. “I tell you fairly, I had rather they were cleared out. Now, I'll confess to anything you please to ask me. That's a firm offer.” He would probably have done it, but she told him that she had no questions to put. “Very well, my dear,” he said. “Have it as you will. It's sublime of you—but it's not love. If you don't want to know it's because you don't care.”
“No, indeed,” she sighed, with such conviction that he was stung.
“Hang it all, Sancie,” he cried, “you can't have known me for eight years without feeling something.” She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were full.
“Oh, Nevile,” she said, with a quivering lip, “don't let us look back. Indeed, I can't do it now.” He put his arm round her and, drawing her closer, kissed her forehead. “My pretty one, we won't. I had much rather look forward. The future is to be my affair—if the past was yours.” Then he went away, and she saw nothing of him for two days. On the second of them he dined with Lady Maria, and met some of the Percivals—the father and mother, the Sinclairs, and Mr. Tompsett-King. (Philippa had declined to come.) He behaved with great discretion, and so continued. After a week or ten days of courtship, she could hardly believe that their relations had ever been interrupted. His reliance upon her was absolute, his confidence no less so. He babbled of himself and his concerns in the old vein of mocking soliloquy, careless whether she heard him or not. Now that he had her promise, he seemed in no hurry for possession. His kisses were fraternal, his embraces confined to a hand on her shoulder, an arm lightly about her waist. She was inordinately thankful to him, and by a queer freak of the mind, poured all her gratitude into Senhouse. She told herself that but for him she would never have brought herself to her duty; but for him, therefore, would never have discovered how little she had to fear. Here was a crown for her “dear obsequious head”: shutting her eyes tightly, she thought that she could feel his fingers putting it on, smoothing out her hair so that the circlet should fit closely. Night after night she knelt to receive it. It came as a result of prayer.
The marriage-announcement, got into the paper by Mrs. Percival, was accepted for what it was worth. It was partly the price of her crown. A few letters from old friends were formally answered. Sanchia had never been a free writer; nobody but Senhouse had found her letters eloquent—he only had been able to feel the throb beneath the stiff lines. Her handwriting, round and firm, had for him a provocative quality; it stung his imagination. He used to sing her “divine frugality of utterance,” and protest that it was all of a piece with the rest of her life. No one, he had told her once, but a sculptor could embody her in Art—her chill perfection, her severity and definite outline. A poet might not dare, for he would have to be greater than love itself, greater than the love which inspired him, able to put it down below him, and stand remote from it, and regard it as a speck in the landscape.
Your sober thought, and your pride
To nurse the passion you hold and hide
he had written of her in his day. That austere concealment of her heart, which so impassioned him, chilled enthusiasm in all others of her acquaintance. So her letters were few, and now she was thankful enough. She herself wrote to nobody, and never spoke of her future unless she was compelled to answer questions.
Once a day, however, she took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the words, “My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you—” or a similar exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must be considered his marriage? An instinct forbade her. She didn't reason with it: her reason was paralysed. “It's part of the price. It's what he would have praised me for”—and she flew to her text.
“A great power is in your thin sweet hands, my sweet; you are in the way of being a great artist.” She looked at her hands, and loved them for his sake who had loved them so well. Her “thin sweet hands!” Could one write so of her hands and not love them well?