Part 25 (1/2)

They had begun to walk onward as they talked, but at this she halted.

”Please don't take that tone. I dislike sentimentality!” she exclaimed, with a tinge of imperiousness that was a surprise to her own ears.

It was not the first time in the course of her friends.h.i.+p with Stephen Wyant that she had been startled by this intervention of something within her that resisted and almost resented his homage. When they were apart, she was conscious only of the community of interests and sympathies that had first drawn them together. Why was it then--since his looks were of the kind generally thought to stand a suitor in good stead--that whenever they had met of late she had been subject to these rushes of obscure hostility, the half-physical, half-moral shrinking from some indefinable element in his nature against which she was constrained to defend herself by perpetual pleasantry and evasion?

To Wyant, at any rate, the answer was not far to seek. His pale face reflected the disdain in hers as he returned ironically: ”A thousand pardons; I know I'm not always in the key.”

”The key?”

”I haven't yet acquired the Lynbrook tone. You must make allowances for my lack of opportunity.”

The retort on Justine's lips dropped to silence, as though his words had in fact brought an answer to her inward questioning. Could it be that he was right--that her shrinking from him was the result of an increased sensitiveness to faults of taste that she would once have despised herself for noticing? When she had first known him, in her work at St. Elizabeth's some three years earlier, his excesses of manner had seemed to her merely the boyish tokens of a richness of nature not yet controlled by experience. Though Wyant was somewhat older than herself there had always been an element of protection in her feeling for him, and it was perhaps this element which formed the real ground of her liking. It was, at any rate, uppermost as she returned, with a softened gleam of mockery: ”Since you are so sure of my answer I hardly know why I should see you tomorrow.”

”You mean me to take it now?” he exclaimed.

”I don't mean you to take it at all till it's given--above all not to take it for granted!”

His jutting brows drew together again. ”Ah, I can't split hairs with you. Won't you put me out of my misery?”

She smiled, but not unkindly. ”Do you want an anaesthetic?”

”No--a clean cut with the knife!”

”You forget that we're not allowed to despatch hopeless cases--more's the pity!”

He flushed to the roots of his thin hair. ”Hopeless cases? That's it, then--that's my answer?”

They had reached the point where, at the farther edge of the straggling settlement, the tiled roof of the railway-station fronted the post-office cupola; and the shriek of a whistle now reminded Justine that the spot was not propitious to private talk. She halted a moment before speaking.

”I have no answer to give you now but the one in my note--that I'll see you tomorrow.”

”But if you're sure of knowing tomorrow you must know now!”

Their eyes met, his eloquently pleading, hers kind but still impenetrable. ”If I knew now, you should know too. Please be content with that,” she rejoined.

”How can I be, when a day may make such a difference? When I know that every influence about you is fighting against me?”

The words flashed a refracted light far down into the causes of her own uncertainty.

”Ah,” she said, drawing a little away from him, ”I'm not so sure that I don't like a fight!”

”Is that why you won't give in?” He moved toward her with a despairing gesture. ”If I let you go now, you're lost to me!”

She stood her ground, facing him with a quick lift of the head. ”If you don't let me go I certainly am,” she said; and he drew back, as if conscious of the uselessness of the struggle. His submission, as usual, had a disarming effect on her irritation, and she held out her hand.

”Come tomorrow at three,” she said, her voice and manner suddenly seeming to give back the hope she had withheld from him.

He seized on her hand with an inarticulate murmur; but at the same moment a louder whistle and the thunder of an approaching train reminded her of the impossibility of prolonging the scene. She was ordinarily careless of appearances, but while she was Mrs. Amherst's guest she did not care to be seen romantically loitering through the twilight with Stephen Wyant; and she freed herself with a quick goodbye.

He gave her a last look, hesitating and imploring; then, in obedience to her gesture, he turned away and strode off in the opposite direction.