“ ‘The conduct of the cardinal at this juncture—’ ” she was saying with great seriousness, when the little girl beside her, who naturally wasn’t attending, looked up and saw me. I gave her a friendly smile, and after that moment’s careful scrutiny which females of all ages indulge in, she smiled back. The next moment Lucy looked at her and then round up at me, giving a soft, frightened “Hah!” and then going as white as a sheet.
Really, it is quite impossible to say at what age a comprehension of love, its torments and its joys, arises in the fresh girlish breast. The pretty creature seated at Lucy’s side couldn’t have been more than eleven, but she saw at once I loved her teacher and desired to be alone with her; so she immediately rose, staid and composed as a woman, shook her long hair, and, with complete unconsciousness, strolled off and joined the other older girls; while they, not to be behindhand in delicacy, soon stopped their somewhat noisy game, and, forming a sympathetic group at some little distance under an elm, stood there talking in whispers with their backs to us; pretending to be immensely interested and absorbed in the ’buses rumbling down the Bayswater Road.
But for her little frightened cry, Lucy received me in silence, and didn’t even give me her hand. She sat there on the seat—cut and scarred with other, happier lovers’ records—with her head slightly turned away from me; perfectly composed, apparently, after the first shock and natural agitation of seeing me again so suddenly were over.
I asked her how she was and how long she had been in town; she said she was quite well, and had been there since the day before yesterday.
Then she said, calmly, “Can you tell me the time, please?” and on my replying it was a quarter to one, murmured she must be going home to dinner, and made as if she would rise.
I stopped her with, “Please, Lucy, let me speak to you first.” So she remained perfectly still, though with her pretty head still turned away from me.
Eloquent, or, at all events, talkative, as I generally am with the sex, I admit I couldn’t for the life of me tell how to begin.
At last I said I was afraid she must think badly of me, and then waited of course for her contradiction; but as it never came, and she never made a sign, I went on to say I shouldn’t dare approach her were it not I was a free man; that my affair with—with the other lady was finally at an end, and so I came to her first and at once with my whole heart. As I spoke, I watched her closely, if only in the hope I might detect some slight twitching of her small ungloved hands, or some involuntary twittering of her eyes or lips, when I told her I was free; but she sat so like an antique, or, for the matter of that, a modern statue, I began to grow frightened, since I know very well how implacable even the tenderest of women can sometimes be when it suits them.
“Oh, Lucy dear!” I stammered, “d-don’t be hard on me. I loved you the moment I saw you. I never really loved the other one. Since the day I first set eyes on you, I have never given any other woman a serious thought. You can’t be so unkind as to break my life in pieces, merely because I’ve been careless, merely because I spoke to you before I was quite sure I was free? Why, I was free of her directly I saw you, and if she hadn’t released me of her own accord, as she has done—Oh, Lucy! don’t leave me in this dreadful suspense! Do, my dear girl, say something kind to me, for mercy’s sake!”
“I don’t feel kindly towards you, Mr. Blacker,” Lucy answered, cold and stern, “and I can’t pretend. I know quite well what’s happened. You thought I was only an innkeeper’s daughter—”