"You are almost gruff as well as unintelligible," said she.
"I beg your pardon," he cried. "Pray forgive me, Ella."
"I'll forgive your gruffness if you make yourself intelligible," said she. "You frighten me. Ten years hence? What has happened to-day?"
"Oh, nothing whatever has happened! and as for ten years hence--well, in ten years hence I shall be looking back to this day either as one of the happiest of my life, or as Francesca looked back upon her /tempo felice/."
"Oh, now that you get into a foreign language you are quite intelligible. You have not spoken?"
"Spoken? I? To her--to her? I have not spoken. I don't believe that I shall ever have the courage to speak to her in the sense you mean."
Ella smiled as she settled a rose on the bodice of her evening dress--its red petals were reposing in that little interspace that dimpled the soft shell-pink of her bosom. The man before her had once kissed her.
She smiled, as she knew that he was watching her. She wondered if he had forgotten that kiss.
"Why should you lose courage at this juncture?" she asked. "She hasn't, up to the present, shown any very marked antipathy to you, so far as I can see. She is certainly not wanting in courage, if you are."
"Ella," he cried, but in a low voice, "Ella, when I look at her, when I think of her, I feel inclined to throw my bag into a trap and get back to town--get back to New Guinea with as little delay as possible."
"You would run away?" said she, still smiling. She had begun to work with the rose in her bosom once more. "You would run away? Well, you ran away once before, you know."
She could not altogether keep the sneer out of her voice; she could not quite deprive her words of their sting. They sounded to her own ears like the hiss of a lash in the air. She was amazed at the amount of bitterness in her voice--amazed and ashamed.
He stood before her, silently looking at her. There was no reproach in his eyes.
"Oh, Bertie, Bertie, forgive me!" she said, laying her hand on his arm. "Forgive me; I don't know what I am saying."
There was some piteousness in her voice and eyes. She was appealing to him for pity, but he did not know it. Every man thinks that the world was made for himself alone, and he goes tramping about it, quite careless as to where he plants his heavy feet. When occasionally he gets a thorn in one of his feet, he feels quite aggrieved. He never stops to think of all the things his foot crushes quite casually.
Herbert Courtland had no capacity for knowing how the woman before him was suffering. He should have known, from the words he had just heard her speak. He should have known that they had been wrung from her. He did not know, however; he was not thinking of her.
"Bertie," she said again, "Bertie, you are not angry? I did not know what I was saying."
"You are a woman," he said gently, and it was just by reason of this gentleness that there seemed to be a reproach in his voice. He reproached her for being a woman.
"I am a woman--just as other women, just as other women." Her voice sounded like a moan. "I thought myself different, stronger--perhaps worse than other women. I was wrong. Oh, Bertie! cannot you see that she loves you as I loved you long ago--oh, so long ago? And someone has said that there is no past tense in love! No, no! she does not love you as I loved you--guiltily; no, her love is the love that purifies, that exalts. She loves you, and she waits for you to tell her that you love her. You love her, Bertie?"
There was a long pause before he said:
"Do I?"
"Do you not?"
"God knows."
And it was at this point that Phyllis came up. Was there no expression of suspicion on her face as she looked at them standing together?
If there was, they failed to notice it.
"I came out to get a rose," she said. "How quickly you dressed, Ella!
Ah, you have got your rose--a beauty! Your gardener is generous; he actually allows you to pluck your own roses."
"Mr. Courtland will choose one for you," said Ella. "You may trust Mr. Courtland."
"To choose me a rose? Well, on that recommendation, Mr. Courtland, I think I may safely place myself in your hands. I will accept a rose of your choosing."
And she did.
