I got up.
“Are you going?”
“Why not?”
“Please sit down again.”
“But you wish to be alone—-”
“Please sit down!”
There was a flush on the cheek turned towards me, and the chin was tilted higher.
I sat down.
To westward the sky had changed to the hue of a bruised cherry. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and the sea looked cold and leaden. The blackbird had long since flown.
“I am glad you told me, Mr. Garnet.”
She dipped her brush in the water.
“Because I don’t like to think badly of–people.”
She bent her head over her painting.
“Though I still think you behaved very wrongly. And I am afraid my father will never forgive you for what you did.”
Her father! As if he counted.
“But you do?” I said eagerly.
“I think you are less to blame than I thought you were at first.”
“No more than that?”
“You can’t expect to escape all consequences. You did a very stupid thing.”
“I was tempted.”
The sky was a dull grey now. It was growing dusk. The grass on which I sat was wet with dew.
I stood up.
“Isn’t it getting a little dark for painting?” I said. “Are you sure you won’t catch cold? It’s very damp.”
“Perhaps it is. And it is late, too.”
She shut her paint-box, and emptied the little mug on to the grass.
“May I carry your things?” I said.
I think she hesitated, but only for a moment.
I possessed myself of the camp-stool, and we started on our homeward journey.
We were both silent. The spell of the quiet summer evening was on us.
” ‘And all the air a solemn stillness holds,’ ” she said softly. “I love this cliff, Mr. Garnet. It’s the most soothing place in the world.”
“I found it so this evening.”
She glanced at me quickly.
“You’re not looking well,” she said. “Are you sure you are not overworking yourself?”
“No, it’s not that.”
Somehow we had stopped, as if by agreement, and were facing each other. There was a look in her eyes I had never seen there before. The twilight hung like a curtain between us and the world. We were alone together in a world of our own.
“It is because I had offended you,” I said.
She laughed a high, unnatural laugh.
“I have loved you ever since I first saw you,” I said doggedly.
CHAPTER XVIII
UKRIDGE GIVES ME ADVICE
Hours after–or so it seemed to me–we reached the spot at which our ways divided. We stopped, and I felt as if I had been suddenly cast back into the workaday world from some distant and pleasanter planet. I think Phyllis must have felt much the same sensation, for we both became on the instant intensely practical and businesslike.
“But about your father,” I said.
“That’s the difficulty.”
“He won’t give us his consent?”
“I’m afraid he wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You can’t persuade him?”
“I can in most things, but not in this. You see, even if nothing had happened, he wouldn’t like to lose me just yet, because of Norah.”
“Norah?”
“My sister. She’s going to be married in October. I wonder if we shall ever be as happy as they will.”
“Happy! They will be miserable compared with us. Not that I know who the man is.”
“Why, Tom of course. Do you mean to say you really didn’t know?”
“Tom! Tom Chase?”
“Of course.”
I gasped.
“Well, I’m hanged,” I said. “When I think of the torments I’ve been through because of that wretched man, and all for nothing, I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t you like Tom?”
“Very much. I always did. But I was awfully jealous of him.”
“You weren’t! How silly of you.”
“Of course I was. He was always about with you, and called you Phyllis, and generally behaved as if you and he were the heroine and hero of a musical comedy, so what else could I think? I heard you singing duets after dinner once. I drew the worst conclusions.”
“When was that? What were you doing there?”
“It was shortly after Ukridge had got on your father’s nerves, and nipped our acquaintance in the bud. I used to come every night to the hedge opposite your drawing-room window, and brood there by the hour.”