Part 9 (1/2)

Winifred, as I could see, even by the moonlight, was blus.h.i.+ng. 'Ah, those childish days!' she said. 'How delightful they were, sir!'

'”Sir” again!' said I. 'Now, Winifred, I am going to execute my threat--I am indeed.'

She put up her hands before her face and said,

'Oh, don't! please don't.'

The action no doubt might seem coquettish, but the tone of her voice was so genuine, so serious--so agitated even--that I paused:--I paused in bewilderment and perplexity concerning us both. I observed that her fingers shook as she held them before her face. That she should be agitated at seeing me after so long a separation did not surprise me, I being deeply agitated myself. It was the _nature_ of her emotion that puzzled me, until suddenly I remembered my mother's words.

I perceived then that, child of Nature as she still was, some one had given her a careful training which had transfigured my little Welsh rustic into a lady. She had not failed to apprehend the anomaly of her present position--on the moonlit sands with me. Though could not break free from the old equal relations between us. Winifred had been able to do so.

'To her,' I thought with shame, 'my offering to kiss her at such a place and time must have seemed an insult. The very fact of my attempting to do so must have seemed to indicate an offensive consciousness of the difference of our social positions. It must have, seemed to show that I recognised a distinction between the drunken organist's daughter and a lady.'

I saw now, indeed, that she felt this keenly; and I knew that it was nothing but the sweetness of her nature, coupled with the fond recollection of the old happy days, that restrained that high spirit of hers, and prevented her from giving expression to her indignation and disgust.

All this was shown by the appealing look on her sweet, fond face, and I was touched to the heart.

'Winifred--Miss Wynne,' I said, 'I beg your pardon most sincerely.

The shadow-dance has been mainly answerable for my folly. You did look so exactly the little Winifred, my heart's sister, that I felt it impossible to treat you otherwise than as that dear child-friend of years ago.'

A look of delight broke over her face.

'I felt sure it was so,' she said. 'But it is a relief that you have said it.' And the tears came to her eyes.

'Thank you, Winifred, for having pardoned me. I feel that you would have forgiven no one else as you have forgiven me. I feel that you would not have forgiven any one else than your old child-companion, whom on a memorable occasion you threatened to hit, and then had not the heart to do so.'

'I don't think I _could_ hit _you_,' said she, in a meditative tone of perfect unconsciousness as to the bewitching import of her speech.

'Don't you think you could?' I said, drawing nearer, but governing my pa.s.sion.

'No,' said she, looking now for the first time with those wide-open confiding eyes which, as a child, were the chief characteristic of her face. 'I don't think I could hit you, whatever you did.'

'Couldn't you, Winifred?' I said, coming still nearer, in order to drink to the full the wonder of her beauty, the thrill at my heart bringing, as I felt, a pallor to my cheek. 'Don't you think you could hit your old playfellow, Winifred?'

'No,' she said, still gazing in the same dreamy, reminiscent way straight into my eyes as of yore. 'As a child you were so delightful.

And then you were so kind to me!'

At that word 'kind' from _her_ to _me_ I could restrain myself no longer; I shouted with a wild laughter of uncontrollable pa.s.sion as I gazed at her through tears of love and admiration and deep grat.i.tude--gazed till I was blind. My throat throbbed till it ached: I Could get out no more words; I could only gaze. At my shout Winifred stood bewildered and confused. She did not understand a mood like that. Having got myself under control, I said,

'Winifred, it is not my doing; it is Fate's doing that we meet here on this night, and that I am driven to say here what I had as a schoolboy sworn should be said whenever we should meet again.'

'I think,' said Winifred, pulling herself up with the dignity of a queen, 'that if you have anything important to say to me it had better be at a more seasonable time than at this hour of night, and at a more seasonable place than on these sands.'

'No, Winifred,' said I, 'the time is _now_, and the place is here--here on this very spot where, once on a time, you said ”certumly” when a little lover asked your hand. It is now and here, Winifred, that I will say what I have to say.'

'And what is that, sir?' said Winifred, much perplexed and disturbed.

'I have to say, Winifred, that the man does not live and never _has_ lived,' said I, with suppressed vehemence, who loved a woman as I love you.'

Oh, sir! oh, Henry!' returned Winifred, trembling, then standing still and whiter than the moon. 'And the reason why no man has ever loved a woman as I love you, Winifred, is because your match, or anything like your match, has never trod the earth before.'