Then they went together into the drawing room. It was not yet dark enough for the candles to be lighted. The exquisite summer twilight was hanging over the river and the banks opposite, wooded from the water's edge to the summit. It was the hour of delicate blue touched with pink about the borders. The hour of purple and silver stars had not yet come.
She threw open one of the windows on its hinges, and in a moment the room was flooded with the perfume of the roses of the garden. She stood in the opening of the window and seemed to drink in the garden scents before they floated into the room. Then from some secret nestling place in the dark depths of the clipped hedge there came the even-song of a blackbird. It was replied to from the distance; and the silence that followed only seemed to be silence. It was a silence made vocal by the bending of a thousand notes--all musical. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the robins made up a chorus of harmony as soothing to the soul as silence. Then came the cooings of the wood pigeons. The occasional shriek of a peacock was the only note out of harmony with the feeling breathed by the twilight.
She stood at the open window, her back turned to him, for some time.
He felt slightly embarrassed. Her attitude somehow suggested to him an imprisonment; he was captured; she was standing between him and the open air; she was barring his passage.
Suddenly she turned. With her movement there seemed to float into the room a great breath of rose-scent. It was only that the light showed him more clearly at that moment the glowing whiteness of her neck and shoulders and arms.
"Why have you come back?" she cried, almost piteously.
"Surely you know why, Ella," said he.
"I know nothing: a man is one thing one day and quite the opposite the next day. How can I know anything of what is in your mind to-day--in your heart to-day?"
"I came back thinking to find her here still--I fancied that you said she would stay until you were returning to-morrow."
"You came back for her?"
"I came back to see her--I find that I cannot live without seeing her."
"You have only found that out since you left here yesterday morning?"
"Only since I left here. I told you that I was not sure of myself.
That is why I went away."
"You went away to make sure of yourself, and now you return to make sure of her?"
"Ah, if I could but think that! If I could only be as sure of her as I am of myself. But what am I that I should dare to hope? Oh, she is above all womankind--a crown of girlhood! What am I that I should ask to wear this crown of girlhood?"
"You are a king of men, Bertie. Only for the king of men is such a crown."
She laughed as she stood looking at him as she leaned against the half open door of the window, one hand being on the framework above her head.
"Ella, you know her!" he cried, facing her. She began to swing gently to the extent of an inch or two, still leaning on the edge of the hinged window. She was looking at him through half-closed, curious eyes. "Ella, you know her--she has always been your friend; tell me if I should speak to her or if I should go back to the work that I have begun in New Guinea."
"Would you be guided by me, Bertie?" she asked, suddenly ceasing her movement with the window and going very close to him indeed--so close that he could feel the gracious warmth of her face and bare neck and shoulders. "Would you be guided by me, I wonder?"
"Have I not been guided by you up to the present, Ella?" said he.
"Should I be here to-night if it were not for your goodness? I laughed some time ago--how long ago it seems!--when you told me--you said it was your dearest wish--I did not then believe it possible----"
"And do you fancy that I believed it possible?" she asked, with some sadness in her voice.
"Great Heavens! Ella, do you mean to tell me that you---- Oh, no, it is impossible! You knew me."
"I fancied that I knew you, Bertie. I fancied that I knew myself."
"Ella, Ella, for God's sake don't let us drift again. Have you no recollection of that terrible time through which we both passed--that ordeal by fire. Ella, we were plucked from the fire--she plucked us from the very fire of hell itself--oh, don't let us drift in that direction again!"
He had walked away from her. He was beginning to recall too vividly the old days, under the influence of her gracious presence so close to him--not so close as it had been, but still close enough to bring back old memories.
"Come here and stand beside me, Bertie," said she.
After a moment's hesitation he went to her, slowly, not with the rapture of a lover--not with the old passion trembling in his hands, on his lips.
He went to her.
She put her hands behind her and looked at him in the face for a long time. The even-songs of the birds mixed with the scent of the roses; the blue shadow of the twilight was darkening over the trees at the foot of her garden.
"Do you remember the oleanders?" she said. "I never breathe in such a twilight as this without seeing before me the oleanders outlined against its blue. It was very sweet at that old place on the Arno."
"Ella, Ella--for God's sake----"
"You told me that terrible secret of your life--that you loved me. I wonder if I knew what it meant, Bertie? I told you that I loved you: that was more terrible still. I wonder if you knew what that meant, Bertie?"
He did not speak.
The bird's songs outside were becoming softer and more intermittent.
She gave a sudden cry as if stung with pain, and started away from the window. She threw herself down on the couch, burying her face in the pillows--he could see through the dim room the whiteness of her arms.
She was breathing convulsively; but she was not sobbing.
He remained beside the open window. He, too, was not breathing so regularly as he had breathed a short time before.
He heard the sigh that came from her as she raised her head from the pillow.
Then she said:
"I wonder if you ever really loved me, Bertie."
"Oh, my God!"
"I wonder if you ever loved me; and I wonder if I ever loved you until this moment."
There was a silence. Outside there was a little whisper of moving wings, but no voice of bird.
