There had been
a time when the discovery that she and her affairs were
of so little consequence to her friend would have given
her a wondering pang; but that time seemed to have passed.
She talked lightly on about her journey; her voice and
her thoughts, had suddenly been freed. She dilated upon
the pleasures she anticipated as if they had been real,
skimming over the long spaces of his silence, and gathering
gaiety as he grew more and more sombre. When he rose to
go their moods had changed: the brightness and the flush
were hers, and, his face spoke only of a puzzled dejection,
an anxious uncertainty.
"So it is good-by," he said, as she gave him her hand,
"for a year!"
Something in his voice made her look up suddenly, with
such an unconscious tenderness in her eyes as he had
never seen in any other woman's. She dropped them before
he could be quite certain he recognized it, though his
heart was beating in a way which told him there had been
no mistake.
"Lady Halifax means it to be a year," she answered--and
surely, since it was to be a year, he might keep her hand
an instant longer.
The full knowledge of what this woman was to him seemed
to descend upon John Kendal then, and he stood silent
under it, pale and grave-eyed, baring his heart to the
rush of the first serious emotion life had brought him,
filled with a single conscious desire--that she should
show him that sweetness in her eyes again.
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