"Be-cause--Oh, I say, it"s six o"clock; are you going to stay?"
"Perhaps. Why?"
"Because I"d only one more shelf to dust and then I"d "ave finished.
I--I"m in rather a hurry."
"Why won"t you stay and dust it now?"
"Well--you know--" She took one step inside the room timidly, then another, and stood still.
"Is it me you"re afraid of? I"ll sit outside, on the stairs, if you"d rather."
"How silly!" She removed an invisible atom of dust from a chair as she spoke, as much as to say she was inspired solely by the instinct of order.
The diminutive smile played about the corners of her mouth. "Miss Roots said I"d better not meddle with your books."
"Did she? Then Miss Roots is a beast."
"She seemed to think I didn"t know how to dust them."
"Perhaps she"s right. I say, suppose you let me see."
And Flossie, willingly cajoled, began again, and, as he saw with horror, on his h.o.a.rded relics of the Harden library. "No, Flossie," he said, with a queer change in his voice. "Not those." But Flossie"s fingers moved along their tops with a delicacy born of the incessant manipulation of bank notes. All the same, she did do it wrong, for she dusted towards the backs instead of away from them. But he hadn"t the heart to correct her. He watched a moment; then he pretended to be looking for the book he had pretended he wanted to find, then he sat down and pretended to write a letter whilst Flossie went on dusting, skilfully, delicately. She even managed to get through ten volumes of his own Bekker"s Plato without damage to the beautiful but perishing Russia leather. That made it all the more singular that the back of the eleventh volume should come off suddenly with a rip.
She gave a little cry of dismay. He looked up, and she came to him holding the book in one hand and its back in the other. She really was a little frightened. "Look," she said, "I didn"t think it would have gone and done like that."
"Oh, I say, Flossie--"
"I"m orf"ly sorry." Her mouth dropped, not unbecomingly; her eyes were so liquid that he could have sworn they had tears in them. She looked more than ever like an unhappy child, standing beside him in her long straight overall. "And I wouldn"t let anybody look at them but me."
"Why wouldn"t you? I"ve asked you that before, Flossie--why wouldn"t you?" He took the book and its mutilated fragment from her, and held both her hands in his.
"Because I knew you were fond enough of _them_."
"And is there anything I wasn"t fond enough of--do you think?"
"I don"t think; I know."
"No, you know nothing, you know nothing at all about anything. What _did_ you think?"
"I thought you hated me."
"Hated you?"
"Yes. Hated me like poison."
He put his arms about her, gathering her to him! He drew her head down over his heart. "I hate you like this--and this--and this," he said, kissing in turn her forehead, her eyelids and her mouth. He held her at arm"s length and gazed at her as if he wondered whether they were the same woman, the Flossie he had once known, and this Flossie that he had kissed. Then he led her to the sofa, and drew her down by his side, and held her hands to keep her there. And yet he felt that it was he who was being led; he who was being drawn, he who was being held--over the brink of the immeasurable, inexpiable folly. In all this his genius remained alone and apart, unmoved by anything he did or said, as if it knew that through it all the golden chain still held.
Her mouth quivered. "If you didn"t hate me, why were you so rude to me, then?" was the first thing she said.
"Because I loved you when I didn"t want to love you, and it was more than I could stand. And because--because I didn"t know it. But _you_ knew it," he said almost savagely. It seemed to him that his tongue refused the guidance of his brain.
"I"m sure I didn"t know anything of the sort." Her mouth quivered again; but this time it was with a smile.
"Why not? Because I didn"t say so in a lot of stupid words? You _are_ literal. But surely you understood? Not just at first, of course; I didn"t care a bit at first; I didn"t care till long after."
"Long after what?" Flossie was thinking of Miss Poppy Grace on the balcony next door.
"Never mind what."
Flossie knew all about Miss Poppy Grace, and she didn"t mind at all.
"Would I be here now if I didn"t love you?" He still had to persuade himself that this was love. It seemed incredible.
"Rubbish--you know you only came to look at those silly old books,"
said Flossie, nodding contemptuously towards the bookcase.
"Did you imagine I was in love with them? And think of all the things we"ve done together. Didn"t you know? Didn"t you feel it coming on?"
"I know you"ve been orf"ly good--orf"ly. But as for anything else, I"m sure I _never_ thought of it."
"Then think of it now. Or--does that mean that you don"t care for me?"
There was an awful pause. Then Flossie said very indistinctly, so indistinctly that he had to lean his face to hers to catch the words, "No, of course it doesn"t." Her voice cleared suddenly. "But if you didn"t hate me, why did you go away?"
"I went away because I was ill."
"And are you any better?"
"Yes, I think I"m better. I think I"m nearly all right now. I might say I"ll undertake never to be ill again, at least, not if you"ll marry me."
At these words his genius turned and looked at him with eyes ominous and aghast. He had a vision of another woman kneeling beside a hearth as her hands tended a dying fire. And he hardly saw the woman at his side as he drew her to him and kissed her again because of the pain at his heart. And Flossie wondered why in that moment he did not look at her.
He was looking now. And as he looked his genius hid his face.
"You knew that was what I wanted?"
She shook her head slowly. "What does that mean? That you didn"t know?
Or that you won"t? But you will, Flossie?"
As he drew her to him a second time the old terror woke in his heart; but only for a moment. For this time Flossie kissed him of her own accord, with a kiss, not pa.s.sionate like his own, but sweet and fugitive. It was like a reminder of the transience of the thing he sought, a challenge rousing him to a.s.sert its immortality.
He put her from him, and stooped over his own outstretched arms and clasped hands; staring stupidly at the floor. When he spoke again it was hardly, incisively, as a man speaks the truth he hates. "Do you know what this means? It means waiting."
"Waiting?"
"Yes. I"m not a bit well off, you know; I couldn"t give you the sort of home you ought to have just yet. I"d no business to say anything about it; but somehow I thought you"d rather know. And of course I"ve no business to ask you, but--will you wait?"
"Well--if we must, we must."