Then she heard Frank’s voice murmuring in her ear. “Claudia, if you only knew how much I love you. If you would only trust yourself to me. Why are you afraid?”
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully, “I don’t know.”
She gave him a particularly tender smile, out of sheer feminine perverseness, impelled by something that rankled and festered within her. Colin Paton should be made to understand that there was at least one man who was a real friend to her, yes, and might be more.
“Turn down an empty Glass....”
Why not?
CHAPTER XVI
NATURE’S FAULT
Claudia was leisurely dressing for the dinner à quatre at Frank’s studio, leisurely, because there was something in the warm May air, stealing in through the windows, that made her dawdle and dream. She and Pat had motored out into the country that morning, and lunched at a quaint old inn covered with wistaria, just outside Penshurst, and the spell of the country, with its riot of scent and song, still possessed her. She thought of the hedges, with their tender greens; the young grass studded with gold and silver, for the buttercups and daisies were gaily blooming; the lilac in the cottage-gardens, just bursting into exquisite flower; the primroses with their pale beauty, nestling at the roots of the trees; the fruit blossom making a poem in delicate pinks and whites. She looked at the bowl of wild hyacinths she and Pat had gathered as excitedly as a couple of Cockney children, and she wished that she could have stayed in fairyland a little longer. She had been so happy for a few hours, for she loved the country. She had put away all the problems that beset her, and she had let the sweet perfection of Nature soothe her into something closely resembling peace. She had given herself up to its healing, and she was still between it and noisy nerve-racking London as she donned her clothes. In accordance with her mood, she had chosen to wear a simple, almost girlish dress of faint pinks, that reminded her of the orchards they had passed through, and, as a finishing touch to remind her of their excursion, she pinned some primroses on her corsage. Their delicate perfume was like fresh honey.
Her maid noticed that she looked very young that night, with the dreams in her eyes and on her lips, even younger than her twenty-three years. Usually she looked much older, for her self-possessed manner, inherited from her mother, her dignified carriage and air of savoir faire might have belonged to a woman of twenty-eight. To-night she almost had the illusion that she was still an unmarried girl, with The Great Choice before her. The soft, warm air seemed to breathe love, to say, “Take your fill of its sweetness, your life is still to make.” The impassioned song of the birds, the riot and colour, the bursting life in bud and blossom, what did it all say, but: