Canterton had taken her hand and held it a moment, but his eyes never left her face. She was mute, full of a wonder that was half exultant, half afraid. All those subtle fancies that had haunted her at Latimer were becoming realities, instead of melting away into the reasonable sunlight. What had happened to both of them in a week? He was the same big, brown, quiet man of the world, magnanimous, reliable, a little reticent and proud, yet from the moment that he had spoken and she had turned to meet his eyes she had known that he had changed.
“I promised Lynette that I would come.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“Tired? No. I left Latimer early, and after all, it is only seventy miles. I got home about twelve and found mother knitting just as though she had been knitting ever since I left her. Lynette looks lovely.”
She felt the wild necessity of chattering, of covering things up with sound, of giving her thoughts time to steady themselves. His eyes overwhelmed her. It was not that they were too audacious or too intimate. On the contrary they looked at her with a new softness, a new awe, a kind of vigilant tenderness that missed nothing.
“I think you are looking very well.”
“I am very well.”
She caught quick flitting glances going over her, noticing her simple little black hat shaped like an almond, her virginal white dress and long black gloves. The black and white pleased him. Her feminine instinct told her that.
“I came round here to listen to the music.”
“Music is expected at these shows, and not listened to. I always call this ‘Padlock Day.’”