Together! His heart gives a quick throb as he hears that word. He wonders whether she has forgotten. He feels a little impatient of this calm friendliness with which she always treats him. She ignores the past so utterly that at times he feels impelled to say or do something desperate, if only to awaken her from that calm, and know that she can feel still.
The attraction she had had for him is potent as ever. All his rage and indignation had not killed it—the barrier in his path seemed but to rouse it to fresh life when they met again.
No woman in the world was to him what Lauraine was. No woman ever would be, he felt assured. Had he been wise he would have shunned her presence so long as he knew it could exercise its old potent witchery.
But who is wise that loves?
"She is quite safe," he would tell himself restlessly. "And for myself—if it hurts, it is my own fault. I must see her sometimes."
He had grown to look upon Lauraine as martyred to her mother's selfishness. He knew she had never cared for her husband. He saw that even in this short space of time they were drifting slowly—surely apart.
"And I would have made her so happy!" he thought to himself in those hours of solitude when the maddening recollection of her face was always before him.
He almost hated her at such times; hated her because he could not forget her, and all his riches seemed nothing in comparison with just—her love.
She was quite unsuspicious as yet. She thought he must have got over his boyish infatuation long since, and that their friendship was as real to him as to her. He was careful enough not to undeceive her, for he dreaded above all the sentence of banishment she would inevitably pronounce. She had grown so much colder and prouder since her marriage, he thought.
The seat is found, and side by side they sit, talking of a hundred different things that for them have a common interest. To Lauraine it is the most natural thing in the world that Keith should be beside her, and she can always talk to him as she can to no one else. Yet there is that about her which keeps all dangerous allusions in check, which sometimes chills and sometimes awes the wild, hot, young heart beating so restlessly by her side. He tries a hundred times to speak, and yet—he dares not. "She would never forgive," he thinks to himself. "It would seem almost an insult now."