Part 22 (1/2)

”You're _not?_”

”Oh, yes. Didn't you know?”

”I hadn't realized it,” said Noel, and although she avoided looking at him, she noted with a feeling of triumph the dismay in his voice.

”Oh, I say! What a shame. Must you really go?”

”We're going to pay two more visits and then leave Scotland altogether.”

”I shan't stay much longer myself,” observed Noel nonchalantly.

Alex was conscious of keeping the words as it were at the back of her mind, with the implication which she attached to them, while the conversation at the small table became general.

As she followed her hostess and Lady Isabel from the room, Noel, holding open the door, said to her in a rapid, anxious tone, very low:

”You'll come out into the garden afterwards, won't you?”

An enigmatic ”perhaps” was not in Alex' vocabulary.

She gave him a quick, radiant smile, and nodded emphatically.

It never occurred to her eager prodigality that she ran any risk of cheapening the favours that so few had ever coveted.

In the garden she moved along the gravelled walk beside him, actually breathless from inward excitement.

”There was heaps more I wanted to say to you about the book,” Noel remarked disconsolately. ”I shan't have any one to exchange ideas with now. They're all so old--and besides, I don't think English people as a rule care much about psychology and that sort of thing. They're so keen on games. So am I, in a way, but I must say it seems to me that the study of human nature is a good deal more worth one's while.”

”People are so interesting,” said Alex. She was perfectly aware of the futility of her remark as she made it, but in some undercurrent of her consciousness there floated the conviction that one need not put forth any great powers of originality in order to obtain response from Noel Cardew.

”I can be perfectly _natural_ with him--we think alike,” She defended herself against her own unformulated accusation with inexplicable anger.

”I think they're frightfully interesting,” said Noel with conviction.

”Of course, men are far more interesting than women, if you don't mind my saying so, simply from the psychological point of view. I hope you don't think I'm being rude?”

”Oh, _no_.”

”You see, women, as a general rule, are rather shallow, though, of course, there are a great many exceptions. But you know what I mean--as a rule they're rather shallow. That's what I feel about women, they're shallow.”

”Perhaps you're right,” said Alex, rather discouraged. She would not admit to herself that his sweeping a.s.sertion awoke no echo whatever within her.

To her immaturity, the essence of sympathy lay in complete agreement, and abstract questions meant nothing to her when weighed in the balance against her desire to establish, to her own satisfaction at least, the existence of such sympathy between herself and Noel Cardew.

”I've got another mad plan,” said Noel slowly. ”You'll think I'm always getting insane ideas, and this one rather depends on you.”

”Oh, what?”

”I hope you won't mind my suggesting such a thing--” He paused so long that Alex' imagination had time for a hundred foolish, ecstatic promptings, such as her reason knew could not be forthcoming, but for which her whole undisciplined sense of romance was crying.

”Well, look here: what should you think of collaborating with me over the book? I'm sure you could write if you tried, and anyway, you could probably give me sidelights on the feminine part of it. It would be most awfully helpful to me if you would.”