In passionate anxiety he looks at his companion; but she is holding her head low, and he cannot get a good view of her face.
'Why do you walk so fast?' he asks irritably, his eyes taking in the rapidly diminishing space that lies before him. 'Is not the distance short enough in all conscience without your lessening it? Walk slower.'
She slackens her pace; but still she does not speak.
'You asked me why I went away?' he continues almost in a whisper, and with his heart beating like a steam-ram. 'Does that mean that it made any difference to you? May I make it mean that it did? Stay—do not speak—I will not let it mean anything else. If you say that it did not, I will not believe you. I cannot afford to believe you!'
He has forbidden her to speak, and yet now he pauses, hanging in a suspense that is almost ungovernable—for they have passed Queen's classic front, are passing 'All Souls'—upon her slow-coming words. There is a little stir upon her face; a tiny hovering smile.
'I was sorry that you went without your lavender!'
'I am coming back for it,' he cries passionately, the joy-tide sweeping up over his heart to his lips, and almost drowning his words. 'Coming back for it—for it and for all else that I left behind me!'
The smile spreads, red and wavering.
'You left nothing else; I sent all your books after you.'
'Yes,' he says reproachfully, 'you were very conscientious. It would have been kinder to be a little dishonest. You might have kept back the one that we had been reading out of. I had a faint hope that you might have kept it back.'