Part 40 (1/2)

The word was none too strong. The solitary and absorbing pa.s.sion of his life, a pure and honest love for that beautiful girl, surged in his soul, and his face betrayed the curb he was putting on himself. He had had but a poor upbringing, and his code of honour had been self-taught, but he was manly enough to be above making love to another man's promised wife.

'Don't make it any harder for me,' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'I know you are sorry for me. You have been always an angel to me, even when I least deserved it; but this is not the way to treat me to-night. Let me away.'

'Let me be selfish, Walter, just this one night,' she said, in a low, broken voice. 'I don't know why I am crying, for it is a great joy to me that you are here, and that I know now, for ever, that you feel as you used to do before this cruel money parted us; there are not in all the world any friends like the old. Forgive me if I have vexed you.'

She rose up and met his glance, which was one of infinite pity and indescribable pathos. The greatest sorrow, the keenest disappointment which had ever come to Walter, softened him as if with a magic touch, and revealed to her his heart, which was, at least, honest and true in every throb.

'You can never vex me, though I have often vexed you. I need scarcely say I hope you will be happy with the one you have chosen. You deserve the very best in the world, and even the best is not good enough for you.'

A faint smile shone through the tears on the girl's face.

'What has changed you so, Walter? It is as if a whirlwind had swept over you.'

'I have never changed in that particular,' he answered half gloomily. 'I have always thought the same of you since the day I saw you first.'

'Oh, Walter, do you remember our little school in the evenings, with Uncle Abel dozing in the chimney-corner, and your difficulties over the arithmetic? Very often you asked me questions I could not answer, though I am afraid I was not honest enough always to say I did not know.

Sometimes I gave you equivocal answers, didn't I?'

'I don't know; all I know is, that I shall never forget these days, though they can never come again, answered Walter. 'I am learning German this winter, and I like it very much.'

'How delightful! If you go on at this rate, in a very short time I shall be afraid to speak to you, you will have grown such a grand and clever gentleman.'

Walter gave his head a quick shake, which made the waved ma.s.s of his dark hair drop farther on his brow. A fine brow it was, square, solid, ma.s.sive, from beneath which looked out a pair of clear eyes, which had never feared the face of man. He looked older than his years, though his face was bare, except on the upper lip, where the slight moustache appeared to soften somewhat the sterner line of the mouth. Yes, it was a good, true face, suggestive of power and possibility--the face of an honest man. Then his figure had attained its full height, and being clothed in well-made garments, looked very manly, and not ungraceful.

Gladys admired him where he stood, and inwardly contrasted him with a certain other youth, who devoted half his attention to his personal appearance and adornment. Nor did Walter suffer by that comparison.

'Must you go away?' she asked wistfully, not conscious how cruel she was in seeking to keep him there when every moment was pointed with a sorrowful regret, a keen anguish of loss which he could scarcely endure.

'And when will you come again?'

'Oh, I don't know. I can't come often, Gladys; it will be better not, now.'

'It is always better not,' she cried, with a strange petulance. 'There is always something in the way. If you knew how often I want to talk to you about all my plans. I always think n.o.body quite understands us like those whom we have known in our early days, because then there can never be any pretence or concealment. All is open as the day. Is it impossible that we can still be as we were?'

'Quite impossible.' His answer was curt and cold, and he was on his feet again, moving towards the door.

'But why?' she persisted, with all the unreason of a wilful woman. 'May a woman not have a friend, though he should be a man?'

'It would not be possible, and _he_ would not like it,' he said significantly; and Gladys flushed all over, and flung up her head with a gesture of defiance.

'He shall not dictate to me,' she said proudly. 'Well, if you will go, you will, I suppose, but you shall not walk; on that point I am determined.' She rang the bell, gave her order for the carriage, and looked at him whimsically, as if rejoicing in her own triumph. 'I am afraid I am becoming quite autocratic, Walter, so many people have to do exactly as I tell them. If you will not come, will you write to me occasionally, then? It would be delightful to get letters from you, I think.'

Never was man so subtlely flattered, so tempted. Again he bit his lip, and without answering, he took a handsome frame from the piano, and glanced indifferently at the photograph he held.

'Is this the man?' he asked at hazard, and when Gladys nodded, he looked at it again with keener interest. It was the same picture of George Fordyce in his hunting-dress which Gladys had first seen in the drawing-room at Bellairs Crescent.

'A grand gentleman,' he said, with a faint note of bitterness in his tone. 'Well, I hope you will be happy.'

This stiff, conventional remark appeared to anger Gladys somewhat, and for the first time in her life she cast a reproach at him.