Chapter 20

Book III. Chapter XX

For a second, as she approached him, the quick tremor of her glance showed her all intent on the same thought as himself. He transmitted his instructions with mechanical precision, and she answered in the same tone, repeating his words with the intensity of attention of a child not quite sure of understanding. Then she disappeared up the stairs.

Darrow lingered on in the hall, not knowing if she meant to return, yet inwardly sure she would. At length he saw her coming down in her hat and jacket. The rain still streaked the window panes, and, in order to say something, he said: "You're not going to the lodge yourself?"

"I've sent one of the men ahead with the things; but I thought Mrs. Leath might need me."

"She didn't ask for you," he returned, wondering how he could detain her; but she answered decidedly: "I'd better go."

He held open the door, picked up his umbrella and followed her out. As they went down the steps she glanced back at him. "You've forgotten your mackintosh."

"I sha'n't need it."

She had no umbrella, and he opened his and held it out to her. She rejected it with a murmur of thanks and walked on through the thin drizzle, and he kept the umbrella over his own head, without offering to shelter her.

Rapidly and in silence they crossed the court and began to walk down the avenue. They had traversed a third of its length before Darrow said abruptly: "Wouldn't it have been fairer, when we talked together yesterday, to tell me what I've just heard from Mrs. Leath?"

"Fairer----?" She stopped short with a startled look.

"If I'd known that your future was already settled I should have spared you my gratuitous suggestions."

She walked on, more slowly, for a yard or two. "I couldn't speak yesterday. I meant to have told you today."

"Oh, I'm not reproaching you for your lack of confidence. Only, if you had told me, I should have been more sure of your really meaning what you said to me yesterday."

She did not ask him to what he referred, and he saw that her parting words to him lived as vividly in her memory as in his.

"Is it so important that you should be sure?" she finally questioned.

"Not to you, naturally," he returned with involuntary asperity. It was incredible, yet it was a fact, that for the moment his immediate purpose in seeking to speak to her was lost under a rush of resentment at counting for so little in her fate. Of what stuff, then, was his feeling for her made? A few hours earlier she had touched his thoughts as little as his senses; but now he felt old sleeping instincts stir in him... A rush of rain dashed against his face, and, catching Sophy's hat, strained it back from her loosened hair. She put her hands to her head with a familiar gesture...He came closer and held his umbrella over her...

At the lodge he waited while she