‘It can be nullified by a word.’
‘Such a word!’
‘It is a very short one.’
‘There’s a still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you—that you think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now, it is raining; what shall we do? I thought this wind meant rain.’
‘Do? Stand on here, as we are standing now.’
‘Your sister and my aunt are gone under the wall. I think we will walk towards them.’
‘You had made me hope,’ he continued (his thoughts apparently far away from the rain and the wind and the possibility of shelter), ‘that you might change your mind, and give to your original promise a liberal meaning in renewing it. In brief I mean this, that you would allow it to merge into an engagement. Don’t think it presumptuous,’ he went on, as he held the umbrella over her; ‘I am sure any man would speak as I do. A distinct permission to be with you on probation—that was what you gave me at Carlsruhe: and flinging casuistry on one side, what does that mean?’
‘That I am artistically interested in your family history.’ And she went out from the umbrella to the shelter of the hotel where she found her aunt and friend.
De Stancy could not but feel that his persistence had made some impression. It was hardly possible that a woman of independent nature would have tolerated his dangling at her side so long, if his presence were wholly distasteful to her. That evening when driving back to the Hague by a devious route through the dense avenues of the Bosch he conversed with her again; also the next day when standing by the Vijver looking at the swans; and in each case she seemed to have at least got over her objection to being seen talking to him, apart from the remainder of the travelling party.
Scenes very similar to those at Scheveningen and on the Rhine were enacted at later stages of their desultory journey. Mr. Power had proposed to cross from Rotterdam; but a stiff north-westerly breeze prevailing Paula herself became reluctant to hasten back to Stancy Castle. Turning abruptly they made for Brussels.