Athalie

After a long while he rose from the window, went to his door again, opened it and looked out. And saw her still leaning against the window at the corridor's dim end.

She looked around, laughing softly as he came up: "All this – the night, the fragrance, and you, have hopelessly bewitched me. I can't sleep; I don't wish to… But you, poor boy – you haven't even undressed. You look very tired and white, Clive. Why is it you can't sleep?"

He did not answer.

"Shall I get my book and read aloud to you? It's silly stuff – love, and such things. Shall I?"

"No – I'm going back," he answered curtly.

She glanced around at him curiously. For, that day, a new comprehension of men and their various humours had come to enlighten her; she had begun to understand even where she could not feel.

And so, tenderly, gently, in shy sympathy with the powerful currents that swept this man beside her, – but still herself ignorant of their power, she laid her cool cheek against his, drawing his head closer.

"Dearest – dearest – " she murmured vaguely.

His head turned, and hers turned instinctively to meet it; and her arms crept up around his neck.

Then of a sudden she had freed herself, stepped back, one nervous arm outflung as if in self-defence. But her hand fell, caught on the window-sill and clung there for support; and she rested against it breathing rapidly and unevenly.

"Athalie – dear."

"Let me go now – "

Her lips burned for an instant under his; were wrenched away:

"Let me go, Clive – "

"You must not tremble so – "

"I can't help it… I am afraid. I want to go, now. I – I want to go – "

There was a chair by the window; she sank down on it and dropped her head back against the wall behind.

And, as he stood there beside her, over her shoulder through the open window he saw two men in the garden below, watching them.

Presently she lifted her head. His eyes remained fixed on the men below who never moved.

She said with an effort; "Are you displeased, Clive?"

"No, my darling."

"It was not because I do not love you. Only – I – "

"I know," he whispered, his eyes fixed steadily on the men.

After a silence she said under her breath: "I understand better now why I ought to wait for you – if there is any hope for us, – as long as there is any chance. And after that – if there is no chance for us – then nothing can matter."

"I know."

"To-night, earlier, I did not understand why I should deny myself to myself, to you, to them… I did not understand that what I wished for so treacherously masked a – a lesser impulse – "

He said, quietly: "Nothing is surer than that you and I, one day, shall face our destiny together. I really care nothing for custom, law, or folk-way, or dogma, excepting only for your sake. Outside of that, man's folk-ways, man's notions of God, mean nothing to me: only my own intelligence and belief appeal to me. I must guide myself."

"Guide me, too," she said. "For I have come into a wisdom which dismays me."

He nodded and looked down, calmly, at the two men who had not stirred from the shadow of the foliage.

She rose to her feet, hesitated, slowly stretched out her hand, then, on impulse, pressed it lightly against his lips.

"That demonstration," she said with a troubled laugh, "is to be our limit. Good night. You will try to sleep, won't you?.. And if I am now suddenly learning to be a little shy with you – you will not mistake me; will you?.. Because it may seem silly at this late date… But, somehow, everything comes late to me – even love, and its lesser lore and its wisdom and its cunning. So, if I ever seem indifferent – don't doubt me, Clive… Good night."

When she had entered her room and closed the door he went downstairs, swiftly, let himself out of the house, and moved straight toward the garden.

Neither of the men seemed very greatly surprised; both retreated with docile alacrity across the lawn to the driveway gate.

"Anyway," said the taller man, good-humouredly, "you've got to hand it to us, Mr. Bailey. I guess we pinch the goods on you all right this time. What about it?"

But Clive silently locked the outer gates, then turned and stared at the shadowy house as though it had suddenly crumbled into ruins there under the July moon.

CHAPTER XXIV

A FINE lace-work of mist lay over the salt meadows; the fairy trilling of the little owl had ceased. Marsh-fowl were sleepily astir; the last firefly floated low into the shrouded bushes and its lamp glimmered a moment and went out.

Where the east was growing grey long lines of wild-ducks went stringing out to sea; a few birds sang loudly in meadows still obscure; cattle in foggy upland pastures were awake.

When the first cock-crow rang, cow-bells had been clanking for an hour or more; the rising sun turned land and sea to palest gold; every hedge and thicket became noisy with birds; bay-men stepped spars and hoisted sail, and their long sweeps dripped liquid fire as they pulled away into the blinding glory of the east.

And Clive rose wearily from his window chair, care-worn and haggard, with nothing determined, nothing solved of this new and imminent peril which was already menacing Athalie with disgrace and threatening him with that unwholesome notoriety which men usually survive but under which a woman droops and perishes.

He bathed, dressed again, dully uneasy in the garments of yesterday, uncomfortable for lack of fresh linen and toilet requisites; little things indeed to add such undue weight to his depression. And only yesterday he had laughed at inconvenience and had still found charm to thrill him in the happy unconventionality of that day and night.

Connor was already weeding in the garden when he went out; and the dull surprise in the Irishman's sunburnt visage sent a swift and painful colour into his own pallid face.

"Miss Greensleeve was kind enough to put me up last night," he said briefly.

Connor stood silent, slowly combing the soil from the claw of his weeder with work-worn fingers.

Clive said: "Since I have been coming down here to watch the progress on Miss Greensleeve's house have you happened to notice any strangers hanging about the grounds?"

Connor's grey eyes narrowed and became fixed on nothing.

Presently he nodded to himself:

"There was inquiries made, sorr, I'm minded now that ye mention it."

"About me?"

"Yes, sor. There was strangers askin' f'r to know was it you that owns the house or what."