“How do you do, Rupert? Are you staying down here? Is Mrs Dempster with you?”
“Yes. We have taken the house just behind those trees. Do you know it? You cross the next bridge, and follow the lane to the left.”
“Yes, I know it. I’m staying at the Inn.”
Lilith walked by his side, her eyes quietly searching his face, but having vouchsafed these bare words of information, she added nothing more. The silence lasted for several minutes, nevertheless it was with an overwhelming impression of answering a question, that Rupert spoke again, saying slowly:
“She is better, but she is not cured. The attacks of depression come on less frequently, but they still come. We are tring to ward off another at this moment. She grew tired of the East. For a time she delighted in it, and the novelty took her out of herself; but it became wearisome—the eternal glare, the absence of green, the medley of tongues. She wanted to come home. We’ve been wandering about for the last four months, and landed here last week. It’s a charming spot, and peaceful. It ought to do her good!”
There was an appeal in his voice which a woman’s ear should have been quick to read, but Lilith made no response. She turned her strange, expressionless eyes first on the silent, shaded canal, then on the river, sparkling in the sun, its waters beating against the jagged rocks. Until that moment Rupert had regarded the two streams from an artistic standpoint only, now of a sudden they seemed charged with a spiritual meaning. Peace and storm, stagnation and action, life and death,—he saw them all in the contrast between those two streams, and for the first time a doubt crept into his mind whether he had done well for Eve in shielding her from the great current of life, and lapping her round with eternal calm. He turned abruptly to the girl and put another question:
“Will you come with me now and see her? I think perhaps you might do her good.”
“Yes, I will come,” Lilith answered, with a courteous indifference at which Rupert smiled with grim amusement. For two long years he had guarded his treasure with never-ceasing vigilance, finding for her the most secluded retreats, where no alien eye should disturb her repose; avoiding the society of his fellow-creatures as if it had been the plague. And now at last he had invited an outsider to disturb that calm, and she had received the honour with the indifference accorded to the most ordinary of invitations! But, after all, what had he expected? Who had ever yet seen Lilith moved out of her colossal calm!
Rupert led the way towards his temporary home, opened the gate, and escorted Lilith through a brilliant tangle of garden to the front of the house, where several long chairs were ranged along a shaded veranda. On one of these lay Eve, in a reverie so deep that the new-comers had time to take in the details of her appearance before she was aware of their approach.
She wore a white dress, the skirt of which was scattered with the petals of crimson roses, which her restless hands had pulled asunder. Her head was tilted back on the cushion, showing the beautiful line of the throat; her face was ivory white, and the curved bow of her lips showed vividly, startlingly red. Even that first glance brought an impression of strain and unrest; and as her ear at last caught the sound of the approaching footsteps, she leaped upward with a gesture of alarm. Her eyes fell upon Lilith’s figure and distended in wild distress, but the next moment she beheld Rupert, and in a flash the fear disappeared and was replaced by the most melting tenderness. She came forward with the shy grace of a child, slipped her hand into his, and stood passively waiting for what it should please him to do next. Anyone who doubted if Rupert Dempster’s love had stood the strain of those two long years of waiting would have found his answer in one glimpse at the man’s face as he stood holding that little hand in his.