"We must not spoil your other opportunities for work," said Lady Verny; "that would be most unfair. I must confess to you, Miss Waring, that I am leaving the whole question very much in the air. It would be more satisfactory to have the arrangement come direct from Julian. If, as I hope, by your presence the old interest and the old questions come back to him, he will ask you to stay himself. For the present I have simply told him that you are my friend and that you have given up your secretarial work to come here for a much-needed holiday; but we must not waste your time or do anything against your interests. I could not allow that."
"It won't take very long, I expect," Stella answered, "because he would take a dislike so quickly. And if he did that, it wouldn't do, of course. We should see in a week or two. If he doesn't dislike me; I can easily talk to him about Professor Paulson. I remember they had an argument once—about reindeer-moss. Your son said he had discovered it where Professor Paulson had said it didn't exist. I could bring that up quite comfortably. The mere mention of a fellow-laborer's effort stings a man into the wish to prove something or other about it; and once you start proving, secretaries follow."
"Make them follow," said Lady Verny, smiling. "I don't think he will dislike you,—we usually dislike the same people,—only Julian always goes further than I do; he dislikes them more." Then her smile faded. "You will see him to-night at dinner," she said gravely. She could not smile again after she had said that; but she took Stella herself through the dark oak hall and up the broad, winding staircase to a little, old, square room that looked out over the garden to the flooded water-meadows.
"I don't know if you like gardens," Lady Verny said a little shyly. "It's rather a hobby of mine. You'll see it to-morrow."
"I like even my own," said Stella, "though it only holds one plane-tree and ten cats. At least it doesn't really hold the cats. They spill in and out of it in showers like the soot, only more noisily; and I pretend there's a lilac-bush in the corner."
Lady Verny stood by the door for a moment as if she were making up her mind for an immense advance, an almost dazzling plunge into confidence.
"I have a feeling," she said slowly, "as if you would make a good gardener."
After she had gone, Stella opened the window, and leaned out into the garden. She could see nothing but the soft darkness, sometimes massed in the thickness of the yew-hedges, and sometimes tenuous and spread out over the empty spaces of the lawns.
The air blew fresh upon her face, full of sweetness and the promise of life. Stella told herself bitterly that nature was cruel; it let strong young things die, and if that didn't matter (and she sometimes thought dying didn't), nature did worse: it maimed and held youth down. But nothing in her responded to the thought that nature was cruel. A tiny crescent moon shone out between the hurrying clouds, and cast a slim shadow of silver across the dark waters. "Things are cruel," Stella said to herself, "but what is behind them is not cruel, and it must come through. And I'm little and stupid and shy; but some of it is in me for Julian, and he'll have to have it. I shan't know how to give it to him. I shall make hideous blunders and muddles, and the more I want to give, the harder it'll be to do it. Fortunately, it does not depend on me. I can be as stupid as I like if I'm only thinking of him and only caring for him and only wanting it to come through me. Nothing can stop it but minding because I'm stupid. And as for being in love, the more I'm in it the better. For that's what we're all in really, only we're none of us in it enough. As long as I'm not in it for anything I can get out of it, everything will be all right. If I do mind, it doesn't matter if only what I want gets through to Julian."
She lay down on the bed and listened to the wind in the garden playing among the tree-tops. She listened for a long time, until she thought that the garden was upon her side, and then she heard another sound. She knew in a moment what it was; it struck straight against her heart: it was the tap-tap along the passage of wooden crutches.