"What a selfish creature I am!" Ulrica exclaimed impetuously. "Of course you must hurry home as fast as you can. What I shall get from father will not be the half of what I deserve. And to think of my thinking about your getting me off from a scolding at the cost of your being ill! Please do not hate me for it—though you ought to, I am sure!"
Having carried his point, Maltham could afford to be amiable again. He looked straight into her eyes, and for an instant touched her hand, as he said: "No, I shall not—hate you!" His voice was low. He drawled slightly. The break gave to his phrase a telling emphasis.
It was not quite fair. He knew thoroughly the game that he was playing; while Ulrica, save so far as her instinct might guide her, did not know it at all. She did not answer him—and he was silent because silence just then was the right move. And so they went on without words until they were come to the landing-place beside the canal. Even then—for he did not wish to weaken a strong impression—he made the parting a short one: urging that she also must hurry home and get on dry clothes. It did not strike her, either then or later, that he would have shown a more practical solicitude in the premises had he not made her come three miles out of her way.
Indeed, as she sailed those three miles back again, her mind was in no condition to work clearly. In a confused way, that yet was very delightful, she went over to herself the events of that wonderful day—in which, as she vaguely realized, her girlhood had ended and her womanhood had begun. But she dwelt most upon the look that he had given her when he told her, with the break in his phrase, that he would not hate her; and upon the touch of his hand at parting, and his final speech, also with a break in it: "I shall see you to-morrow—if you care to have me come."
At the club that evening Maltham wrote a very entertaining letter to Miss Eleanor Strangford, in Chicago: telling her about the queer old Major and his half-wild daughter, and how the daughter had taken him out sailing and had brought him back drenched through. He was a believer in frankness, and this letter—while not exhaustive—was of a sort to put him right on the record in case an account of his adventures should reach his correspondent by some other way. He would have written it promptly in any circumstances. It was the more apposite because he had promised to write every Sunday to Miss Strangford—to whom he was engaged.
VII
Maltham left his office early the next afternoon and went down the Point again. He had no headache, the wind had shifted to the southward, and all about him was a flood of spring sunshine. Yet even under these cheerful conditions he found the Point rather drearily desolate. He gave the graveyard a wide berth when he came to it, and looked away from it. His desire was strong that he might forget where he had seen Ulrica's name for the first time. He was not superstitious, exactly; but his sub-consciousness that the direction in which he was sliding—along the lines of least resistance—was at least questionable, made him rather open to feelings about bad and good luck.
Being arrived at Eutaw Castle, he inferred from what the Major said and from what Ulrica looked that the domestic storm of the previous day had been a vigorous one—and was glad that he had kept out of it. But it had blown over pretty well, and his good-natured chaff about their adventure swept away the few remaining clouds.