“I do not ask it,” said Roderick, quietly, though his heart was beating fast at the certainty of victory.
“You have given me the food of hope, whereon I can live meanwhile.”
“Could you not bear suspense?” she asked. “I might not answer as you would like.”
“I could bear anything for your sake,” said he. Then, after a pause, “And now goodbye. I must have solitude to dream over my happiness.”
She gave him her hand; he bent over it and kissed it, and she felt his lips hot against her skin. It gave her a little shudder of repugnance, and the feeling remained after he had gone. And yet his fascination was strong upon her. He dominated her will as no man had done before. She was conscious that he had the rare power to penetrate to the core of her woman's weaknesses, to understand her as a botanist understands a plant, and the rarer power to touch the fibres delicately, so that it became a pleasure to be weak. Again, her somewhat exaggerated conception of his wide spiritual and intellectual horizon moved her emotional temperament to wondering respect, and she thought gratefully of the expansion of her own under his influence. With the incomplete vision wherewith the wisest of women must of necessity regard a man, she saw him strong and masterful, clearing his way resolutely to a definite end. She felt that he brought this air of mastery into his love; and he had created a need of him within her.
He held her bound by many chains. And as she stood in the drawing-room, half-consciously rubbing the spot on her hand where his lips had rested, she felt the chains grow tighter, one by one.
Her maid came into the room. “When will you dress, miss?”
She remembered the dinner-party and gave her directions. She wished that she had not to attend it. And then unbidden came the longing for “the sweet new land” with its freedom and freshness, and her cheeks flamed at the sudden realisation of what it all implied.
Her glance fell upon the blotter in which lay the just commenced letter to Matthew Lanyon. She sat down again at the escritoire and took up her pen. But the mood had passed. She found herself writing artificially, in the jargon of her set. Angrily she tore up the paper and threw the fragments into the waste-paper basket. No; better nothing than the insincerity he despised; she loved him too dearly for that. So the letter, that was to reveal her inmost struggling self, remained unwritten.
She was very silent as Lady Milmo and herself drove to the dinner-party. Her head ached and her limbs were tired.