第52章

"It's not easy to say here, at any rate.And indoors Isha'n't know where to say it." He glanced about him in the rain."Let's walk over to the spring-house for a minute."To the right of the drive, under a clump of trees, a little stucco pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of mouldering brick over a flight of steps that led down to a spring.Other steps curved up to a door above.Darrow mounted these, and opening the door entered a small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures.

Some black and gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer stood on the floor of red-glazed tile.

Sophy had followed him without comment.He closed the door after her, and she stood motionless, as though waiting for him to speak.

"Now we can talk quietly," he said, looking at her with a smile into which he tried to put an intention of the frankest friendliness.

She merely repeated: "I can't think what you can have to say."Her voice had lost the note of half-wistful confidence on which their talk of the previous day had closed, and she looked at him with a kind of pale hostility.Her tone made it evident that his task would be difficult, but it did not shake his resolve to go on.He sat down, and mechanically she followed his example.The table was between them and she rested her arms on its cracked edge and her chin on her interlocked hands.He looked at her and she gave him back his look.

"Have you nothing to say to ME?" he asked at length.

A faint smile lifted, in the remembered way, the left corner of her narrowed lips.

"About my marriage?"

"About your marriage."

She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids."What can I say that Mrs.Leath has not already told you?""Mrs.Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact--and her pleasure in it.""Well; aren't those the two essential points?""The essential points to YOU? I should have thought----""Oh, to YOU, I meant," she put in keenly.

He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined:

"The essential point to me is, of course, that you should be doing what's really best for you."She sat silent, with lowered lashes.At length she stretched out her arm and took up from the table a little threadbare Chinese hand-screen.She turned its ebony stem once or twice between her fingers, and as she did so Darrow was whimsically struck by the way in which their evanescent slight romance was symbolized by the fading lines on the frail silk.

"Do you think my engagement to Mr.Leath not really best for me?" she asked at length.

Darrow, before answering, waited long enough to get his words into the tersest shape--not without a sense, as he did so, of his likeness to the surgeon deliberately poising his lancet for a clean incision."I'm not sure," he replied, "of its being the best thing for either of you."She took the stroke steadily, but a faint red swept her face like the reflection of a blush.She continued to keep her lowered eyes on the screen.

"From whose point of view do you speak?"

"Naturally, that of the persons most concerned.""From Owen's, then, of course? You don't think me a good match for him?""From yours, first of all.I don't think him a good match for you."He brought the answer out abruptly, his eyes on her face.

It had grown extremely pale, but as the meaning of his words shaped itself in her mind he saw a curious inner light dawn through her set look.She lifted her lids just far enough for a veiled glance at him, and a smile slipped through them to her trembling lips.For a moment the change merely bewildered him; then it pulled him up with a sharp jerk of apprehension.

"I don't think him a good match for you," he stammered, groping for the lost thread of his words.

She threw a vague look about the chilly rain-dimmed room.

"And you've brought me here to tell me why?"The question roused him to the sense that their minutes were numbered, and that if he did not immediately get to his point there might be no other chance of making it.

"My chief reason is that I believe he's too young and inexperienced to give you the kind of support you need."At his words her face changed again, freezing to a tragic coldness.She stared straight ahead of her, perceptibly struggling with the tremor of her muscles; and when she had controlled it she flung out a pale-lipped pleasantry."But you see I've always had to support myself!""He's a boy," Darrow pushed on, "a charming, wonderful boy;but with no more notion than a boy how to deal with the inevitable daily problems...the trivial stupid unimportant things that life is chiefly made up of.""I'll deal with them for him," she rejoined.

"They'll be more than ordinarily difficult."She shot a challenging glance at him."You must have some special reason for saying so.""Only my clear perception of the facts."

"What facts do you mean?"

Darrow hesitated."You must know better than I," he returned at length, "that the way won't be made easy to you.""Mrs.Leath, at any rate, has made it so.""Madame de Chantelle will not."

"How do YOU know that?" she flung back.

He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal himself in the confidence of the household.Then, to avoid involving Anna, he answered: "Madame de Chantelle sent for me yesterday.""Sent for you--to talk to you about me?" The colour rose to her forehead and her eyes burned black under lowered brows.

"By what right, I should like to know? What have you to do with me, or with anything in the world that concerns me?"Darrow instantly perceived what dread suspicion again possessed her, and the sense that it was not wholly unjustified caused him a passing pang of shame.But it did not turn him from his purpose.