"Alice," he said at last, turning towards her, and so setting his back to the picture—"you don't love this man Feak?"
"Oh—I don't know," she retorted, with a shrug of her shoulders. "He's very nice—and he's brave—and I think he loves me. What more would anyone ask?"
"Alice—have you any love for me—real love, I mean—not this empty thing called friendship?"
"Jimmy!" It was of course what she had seemed to see trembling on his lips a score of times; she had had a thought, in fact, that it might be said this very afternoon; but she was very properly astonished for all that.
"I mean it," he said. "I love you as I love no one else on earth; there's no one like you anywhere—no one who understands me so perfectly as you do—no one who could help me with my work as you are able to help me. I love you."
She sat in a pensive attitude, with her eyes upon the floor; when she spoke she did not look at him, but he was satisfied by the tenderness of her tones and the light blush she had been able to call to the aid of the situation, that he need fear no Ashby Feak. Keeping his back resolutely to that figure in the picture, and so shutting out all that was difficult and impossible, he took her hand a little shamefacedly, noting as he did so that she was careful to look round to see that they were not observed.
"Of course I always felt, Jimmy, that you did care for me; something in your manner seemed to suggest it," she whispered. "Also I think Aunt Baffall and Uncle Baffall have thought so too—although anything they said would make not the slightest difference to me. I love them, and all that kind of thing; but there's the end of it. As for Ashby Feak—well, he's very nice as a friend—and I've felt a little sorry for him; but anything else, Jimmy dear, was absolutely out of the question. And I must say that whatever happens I feel easier in my mind about everything."
"There's one thing, Alice," said Jimmy, a little lamely—"one thing that's rather important. I haven't mentioned it before, and it is a matter about which you'll have to trust me. Love means trust and confidence, you know—and I've got a secret that I must keep even from you."
She looked at him quickly and eagerly; he avoided her eyes. "It's nothing awful—is it?" she asked.
"Nothing at all awful," replied Jimmy casually. "It simply means that—well—for a time you would have—we should have, I mean—to wait—to be true to each other, knowing that things will come right in the future. You would have to take my hands in yours, in a manner of speaking, and to say that you trusted me; to walk blindly with me. Afterwards I should be able to tell you why I had kept you and myself waiting. But not yet."