第47章

At three o'clock next day he called.

In the middle of her white drawing-room, whose latticed window ran the whole length of one wall, stood a little table on which was a silver jar full of early larkspurs, evidently from her garden by the river.And Lennan waited, his eyes fixed on those blossoms so like to little blue butterflies and strange-hued crickets, tethered to the pale green stems.In this room she passed her days, guarded from him.Once a week, at most, he would be able to come there--once a week for an hour or two of the hundred and sixty-eight hours that he longed to be with her.

And suddenly he was conscious of her.She had come in without sound, and was standing by the piano, so pale, in her cream-white dress, that her eyes looked jet black.He hardly knew that face, like a flower closed against cold.

What had he done? What had happened in these five days to make her like this to him? He took her hands and tried to kiss them; but she said quickly:

"He's in!"

At that he stood silent, looking into that face, frozen to a dreadful composure, on the breaking up of which his very life seemed to depend.At last he said:

"What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?"But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked, and flung his arms round her.She clung to him with desperation;then freed herself, and said:

"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay behind that strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the self-pity, and self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married woman for the first time face to face with her lover in her husband's house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange behaviour; to be what she had been during that fortnight in the sunshine.But, suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

"Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you to tea--to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and Cramier coming in.Unsmiling, very big in the low room, he crossed over to them, and offered his hand to Lennan; then drawing a low chair forward between their two chairs, sat down.

"So you're back," he said."Have a good time?""Thanks, yes; very."

"Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes.""It was luck for me."

"No doubt." And with those words he turned to his wife.His elbows rested along the arms of his chair, so that his clenched palms were upwards; it was as if he knew that he was holding those two, gripped one in each hand.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "that fellows like you, with nothing in the world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like London.Ishould have thought Rome or Paris were your happy hunting-grounds."In his voice, in those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with their look of power, in his whole attitude, there was a sort of muffled menace, and contempt, as though he were thinking: "Step into my path, and I will crush you!"And Lennan thought:

"How long must I sit here?" Then, past that figure planted solidly between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously timed--again and again--as if she were being urged by the very presence of this danger.One of those glances would surely--surely be seen by Cramier.Is there need for fear that a swallow should dash itself against the wall over which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it longer.

"Going?" That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.