The New Lady was not at home, Elfa told him, in her motherly little heart pitying him. And at the news he sat down, quite simply, in the chair in which he had sat before. He must see her. It was unthinkable that she should be away. To-night he had meant to have the courage to leave with her his verses.
On the willow table lay her needlework. It was soft and white beyond the texture of most clouds, and she had wrought on it a pattern like the lines on a river. As his eyes rested on it, Nicholas could fancy it lying against her white gown and upon it her incomparable hands. Some way, she seemed nearer to him when he was not with her than when, with her incomparable hands and her fluent speech, she was in his presence. When she was not with him, he could think what to say to her. When he stood before her—the thought of his leave-taking on that veranda seized upon him, so that he caught his breath in the sharp thrust of mortified recollection, and looked away and up.
His eyes met those of Elfa, who was quietly sitting opposite.
"How they must all have laughed at me. You too!" he said.
"Why?" she asked.
"That last time I was here. Shaking hands that way," he explained.
"I didn't laugh," she unexpectedly protested; "I cried."
He looked at her. And this was as if he were seeing her for the first time.
"Cried?" he repeated.