"Let it be Spring then," she said. "This day is yours, my friend."
Friend! whose hand lay hot on hers, when their eyes met half joyously, half despairingly. Joy that fate should have allowed them to meet; despair that since man and woman are created for each other they could not know the fullness of happiness.
A cord long strained will snap at last. The cord of self-restraint which they had tied up the hands of nature with had come to its last strand, and they knew it.
The spring day slipped away to the hour when the curtain rose on the new musical play. Well-named, for it was light and sweet as spring himself, full of tenderly passionate music, of waking love, of budding youth. Tame blood which would not run a little faster as the south and west winds, the sunshine and the showers, came creeping to wake the spring earth maidens. Girls veiled in tender green, their limbs and faces seen through a mist of some transparency. The wild winds blew the draperies aside; a mock gale blowing from the wings; sunshine turned the green to a glow of gold; the showers came, mistily green, with light behind them, but to each the maidens turned, trembled, and gave themselves to the wooing arms.
The whole piece was full of suggestion and of fantasy.
Quiet Estelle, watching, felt the longing in her blood grow stronger; was youth to pass and leave her unwoken by a lover? Was she never to know the madness of hot kisses, the restful heaven of the afterwards?
"I dreamt once that I had found Spring"—Bertie's voice sounded far away to her—"and it was a mocking wraith. Estelle, if we might find it together—you and I."
"If!" She moved her hands to the time of a haunting dance.
The house was full. People who had been the Carterets' friends were here and there. Dollie Gresham, with the Blakeneys; the Holbrooks in a box, often looking sadly at a pair in the stalls—the Marquis and Marchioness of Boredom.
One big box at the left, empty until the middle of the second act, was suddenly filled by a noisy crowd. Three women came to the front, throwing back rich cloaks, showing over-bare necks and arms, flashing with jewels; the background was filled in with the black-and-white uniform of dining mankind.