Radowitz stooped down to try and tempt Lady Marcia’s dachshund with a piece of cake.
‘I must anyhow have a dog,’ he said, as the pampered Max accepted the cake, and laid his head gratefully on the donor’s knee:—‘they’re always company.’
He looked wistfully into the dog’s large friendly eyes.
Connie rose.
‘Please don’t move!’ she said, flushing, ‘I shall be back directly. But I must put up a letter. I hear the postman!’ She ran across the grass, leaving the two men in acute discomfort. Falloden thought again, with rising excitement: ‘She planned it! She wants me to do something—to take some step⸺ But what?’
An awkward pause followed. Radowitz was still playing with the dog, caressing its beautiful head with his uninjured hand, and talking to it in a half whisper. As Constance departed, a bright and feverish red had rushed into his cheeks; but it had only made his aspect more ghostly, more unreal.
Again the absurd idea emerged in Falloden’s consciousness; and this time it seemed to find its own expression, and to be merely making use of his voice, which he heard as though it were someone else’s.
He bent over towards Radowitz.
‘Would you care to share the cottage with me?’ he said abruptly. ‘I want to find a place to read in—out of Oxford.’
Radowitz looked up, amazed—speechless! Falloden’s eyes met Otto’s steadily. The boy turned away. Suddenly he covered his face with his free hand.