Part 15 (1/2)
”Molly.”
”Well?”
”I'm sorry.”
Molly turned.
”I wish you wouldn't say things like that, Jimmy. It hurts--from you.”
He could see that there were tears in her eyes.
”Molly, don't!”
She turned her head away once more.
”I can't help it, Jimmy. It hurts. Everything's so changed. I'm miserable. You wouldn't have said a thing like that in the old days.”
”Molly, if you knew----”
”It's all right, Jimmy. It was silly of me. I'm all right now! The rain has stopped. Let's go back, shall we?”
”Not yet. For G.o.d's sake, not yet! This is my only chance. Directly we get back, it will be the same miserable business all over again; the same that it's been every day since I came to this place. Heavens!
When you first told me that you were living at the abbey, I was absolutely happy, like a fool. I might have known how it would be.
Every day there's a crowd round you. I never get a chance of talking to you. I consider myself lucky if you speak a couple of words to me.
If I'd known the slow torture it was going to be, I'd have taken the next train back to London. I can't stand it. Molly, you remember what friends we were in the old days. Was it ever anything more with you?
Was it? Is it now?”
”I was very fond of you, Jimmy.” He could hardly hear the words.
”Was it ever anything more than that? Is it now? That was three years ago. You were a child. We were just good friends then. I don't want friends.h.i.+p now. It's not enough. I want you--_you_. You were right a moment ago. Everything _has_ changed. For me, at least. Has it for you? Has it for you, Molly?”
On the island a thrush had begun to sing. Molly raised her head, as if to listen. The water lapped against the sides of the canoe.
”Has it, Molly?”
She bent over, and dabbled one finger in the water.
”I--I think it has, Jimmy,” she whispered.
CHAPTER XII.
The Honorable Louis Wesson, meanwhile, having left the water side, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to make a moody tour of the grounds. He felt aggrieved with the world. One is never at one's best and sunniest when a rival has performed a brilliant and successful piece of cutting-out work beneath one's very eyes. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one's outlook on life in such circ.u.mstances. Mr. Wesson did not pretend to himself that he was violently in love with Molly.
But he certainly admired her, and intended, unless he changed his mind later on, to marry her.
He walked, drawing thoughtfully at his cigarette. The more he reviewed the late episode, the less he liked it. He had not seen Jimmy put Molly in the canoe, and her departure seemed to him a deliberate desertion. She had promised to play tennis with him, and at the last moment she had gone off with this fellow Pitt. Who _was_ Pitt? He was always in the way--shoving himself in.