She looked over the beautiful wild country, watching for him. The light was fair on the blue hills; the sea-breeze fluttered the leaves of the cocoanut trees and waved the long thick leaves of the banana. She heard no other sound near or far, till the quick swift tread she was listening for came to her ear. Nobody was to be seen; but the step was not to be mistaken. Eleanor got to the front door and had it open just in time to see him come.
They stood then together in the doorway, for the view was fair on the river side too. The opposite shore was beautiful, and the houses of the heathen village had a great interest for Eleanor, aside from their effect as part of the landscape; but her shyness was upon her again, and she had a thorough consciousness that Mr. Rhys did not see how the light fell on either shore. At last he put his arm round her and drew her up to his side, saying,
"And so you did not get my letters in Sydney.—Poor little dove!"
It struck Eleanor with a curious pleasure, these words. They would have been true, she knew, in the lips of no other mortal, as also certainly to no other mortal would it have occurred to use them. She was not the sort of person by any means to whom such an appellation would generally be given. To be sure her temper was of the finest, but then also it had a body to it. Yet here she knew it was true; and he knew; it was spoken not by any arrogance, but by a purely frank and natural understanding of their mutual natures and relations. She answered by a smile, exceeding sweet and sparkling, as well as conscious, to the face that was looking down at her with a little bit of provoking archness upon its gravity; and their lips met in a long sealing kiss. Husband and wife understood each other.
Perhaps Mr. Rhys knew it, for it seemed as if his lips could hardly leave hers; and Eleanor's face was all manner of lights.
"What has become of Alfred?" he asked, in an irrelevant kind of manner, by way of parenthesis.
"I have not seen him—hardly—since you left England. He is not under mamma's care now."
"And my friend Julia? You have told me but a mite yet about everybody."
"Julia is your friend still. But Julia—I have not seen her in a long, long time."
"How is that?"