"Well, you have come, haven"t you?" he answered. "I say, isn"t your hair different?"
"Well, it isn"t done for a call, if that"s what you mean; I always do it like that at night, stupid. But I"m not going to stand here with you as white as a cottage wall."
Thereupon he paid her the only compliment he ever did pay her--and that was unintentional.
"It isn"t any whiter than your feet, anyway," he said.
"Well, I"m not going to stop a minute."
"Oh, dash it all!" he protested. She did think him cool!
"Good gracious, how long do you think I _am_ going to stay?"
"Hardly worth coming for, I call it," he grumbled.
"_Thank_ you!"
"For you, I mean, of course--as if you didn"t know I"d walk miles--how you take a fellow up!"
"Well, two minutes."
Two minutes can be a very short time; five minutes had pa.s.sed when, making a movement to free herself, she said: "Let me go now, Roy--I think we"re both as mad as we can be."
"There isn"t anybody about," he muttered.
More minutes pa.s.sed; then:
"Do you really think my feet are white?" she whispered. A slipper had come off.
Then, close against his breast, she made an inconsequential, halting little appeal. "Oh, Roy--don"t go in that dreadful boat again! You"ll be drowned--I know you will----"
"Should you care?" he whispered.
"Silly boy!"
"No, but should you care?"...
"Roy, let me go!" she ordered suddenly. The minutes were pa.s.sing fatally quickly.
"No--no----"
"Oh--yes----"
"I won"t let you go."
"Roy, let me go, I say!"
But it was not a command now. It was a supplication--perhaps not even that.
She did not love him; in her heart she knew she did not love him. He loved her--years afterwards; only years afterwards. The thought of her left him--but it returned to him, never to leave him again. The moon made the crest of the hill like day, but the shadows of the gorse-bushes lay dark on the short gra.s.s and stunted bents and the patches of wild thyme. The moon southed, then rode less high. In the short night a lamb called; and then the birds, reaching the shallows of their sleep, gave a drowsy twittering and went to sleep again. It was the false dawn. The stars grew a little brighter as a deeper darkness possessed the earth; then in the darkness a c.o.c.k crowed.
They met again on the next night. On the night after that they met once more.
Only after that did she sit down, alone in the box-room, in the twilight, to think.
Her boxes were packed and strapped, and the cart was coming for them from Rainham Magna in the morning.
She wished Burnett Minor had been there. She would have liked to say good-bye to the child. There was n.o.body else it would break her heart to leave.
Yet Roy was still down there under the hill. The centre-board had gone wrong again. She was to see him at the stile, in the morning, before leaving. It seemed, somehow, superfluous.
But she did meet him. His face was set, and he had forgotten to shave.
"Don"t look like that; it wasn"t your fault," she said composedly.
"It was--it was----" he muttered, hands clenched.
"Rubbish!" She gave a short laugh. "You"ve nothing at all to blame yourself for."
"Oh, I have--I have."
Then he turned to her. "Louie, you"ve got to promise me one thing----"
But she stopped him. She knew what he was going to say.
"That"s quite out of the question," she said.
"But look here!" He used the words he had used the second time they had met. "A fellow can"t get a girl into a mess and then leave her in the lurch. You must marry me, Louie, if--if----"
At that she had found a touch of her old irony.
"Not unless, of course?"
"Oh yes--yes."
But she turned away. "No. Good-bye."
"Won"t you even kiss me?"
"No."
But there was a gentleness in her refusal such as he had never had from her before. Kisses came hardly now.