'Find me a chair, please, before we begin to talk. And—is that your fly? Send it away—to wait under the trees. It can take me up the hill, when we have finished.'
He controlled himself with difficulty and went round the house.
She pressed her hands upon her eyes to shut out the memory of his face.
'She has refused him!' she said to herself; 'and—what is more—she has made him believe it!'
Very soon his step was heard returning. The woman he had left in the shade listened for it, as though in all this landscape of rushing river and murmuring wood it the one audible, significant sound. But when he came back to her again, he saw nothing but a composed, expectant Eleanor; dressed, in these wilds, with a dainty care which would have done honour to London or Paris, with a bright colour in her cheeks, and the quiver of a smile on her lips. Ill! He thought he had seldom seen her look so well. Had she not always been of a thistle-down lightness? 'Exaggeration!—absurdity!' he said to himself fiercely, carrying his mind back to certain sayings in a girl's voice that were still ringing in his ears.
He, however, was in no mood to smile. Eleanor had thrown herself sideways on the chair he had brought her; her arms resting on the back of it, her delicate hands hanging down. It was a graceful and characteristic attitude, and it seemed to him affectation—a piece of her fine-ladyism.
She instantly perceived that he was in a state of such profound and passionate excitement that it was difficult for him to speak.
So she began, with a calmness which exasperated him:
'You asked me, Edward, to explain our escapade?'
He raised his burning eyes.