"Have you had any of this to-day?" he asked. "Then I can give you fifteen grains. Wait till I've got some water." He returned with a tumbler and two cushions and seated himself at her feet. "Have you heard anything fresh from Switzerland?" he asked. "Well, I'm afraid I haven't, either. I dined with Colonel Waring and Agnes to-night, as you know."
Barbara had uncovered her eyes to hold the tumbler; but she set it on the floor, as he began to speak, and shielded her face.
"H-how is he?" she asked.
"He gets tired rather quickly, but otherwise he's all right. Leading quite a normal life, I mean."
His words were deliberately chosen to shew that Jack was in a state to have written, had he wished. His choice was not wasted on her.
"And what now, Eric?" she asked.
"Isn't that for you to say?"
Barbara uncovered her eyes again and looked slowly round the room. It had become so familiar that she no longer noticed its shape or colouring. Instinctively she knew that the sofa demanded a cushion at her back and that the arm-chair between the fire and window did not. But she had never, until now, consciously observed the carpet and curtains, the breast-high white book-cases and Chippendale writing-table, since the first night when she came there and stood tossing a glass horse-shoe idly into the air and stealing curious glances at the furniture.
She recognized it all now and remembered her earliest emotions, remembered even telling him that the first burning cigarette would spoil his grey carpet. But her vision was blurred; she fancied herself seeing through the walls, penetrating a belt of darkness and piercing other walls beyond which she sat at supper with an undemonstrative, quietly determined young man. The jig and stamp of ragtime echoed overhead—"Dixie! All abo-o-oard for Dixie! Dixie! Tak your tickuts heere for Dixie!"; she heard her own voice—"I love that one-step. Why did you drag me away in the middle?" and Jack Waring's in answer—"Well, you ought to be grateful to me for getting you a table before the rush starts." That was a few hours before war was declared, though the long banqueting-hall of Loring Castle had resounded with rumours and expositions of war throughout dinner. Almost at once Jack asked her to marry him; she once more heard his tranquil explanation—"I've just been received into your church."
A blaze of light.… A thunder of voices.… Out of the distance she heard him saying, "In fact, you've been lying to me all along? You never intended to marry me?"