‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘You haven’t had supper yet, I expect?’
‘No,’ he said, not thinking.
‘It will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,’ said she.
‘Oh! But really—’
But she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the bookcase—and there he was! She would take no refusal. It was wondrous.
‘I’m awfully glad I came now,’ his thought ran; I’m managing it rather well.’
And—
‘Poor Bob!’
His sole discomfort was that he could not invent a sufficiently ingenious explanation of his call. You can’t tell a woman you’ve called to make love to her, and when your previous call happens to have been ten years ago, some kind of an explanation does seem to be demanded. Ultimately, as Annie was so very pleased to see him, so friendly, so feminine, so equal to the occasion, he decided to let his presence in her abode that night stand as one of those central facts in existence that need no explanation. And they went on talking and eating till the dusk deepened and Annie lit the gas and drew the blind.
He watched her on the sly as she moved about the room. He decided that she did not appear a day older. There was the same plump, erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair, the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye—only perhaps the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be. She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would never be twenty-three again. Still she was a most desirable woman, and a woman infinitely beyond his deserts.) Her air of general capability impressed him. And with that there was mingled a strange softness, a marvellous hint of a concealed wish to surrender…. Well, she made him feel big and masculine—in brief, a man.
He regretted the lost ten years. His present way of life seemed intolerable to him. The new heaven opened its gate and gave glimpses of paradise. After all, he felt himself well qualified for that paradise. He felt that he had all along been a woman’s man, without knowing it.
‘By Jove!’ his thought ran. ‘At this rate I might propose to her in a week or two.’
And again—
‘Poor old Bobbie!’
A quarter of an hour later, in some miraculous manner, they were more intimate than they had ever been, much more intimate. He revised his estimate of the time that must elapse before he might propose to her. In another five minutes he was fighting hard against a mad impulse to propose to her on the spot. And then the fight was over, and he had lost. He proposed to her under the rose-coloured shade of the Welsbach light.
She drew away, as though shot.
And with the rapidity of lightning, in the silence which followed, he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a fool. Naturally she would request him to leave. She would accuse him of effrontery.
Her lips trembled. He prepared to rise.
‘It’s so sudden!’ she said.
Bliss! Glory! Celestial joy! Her words were at least equivalent to an absolution of his effrontery! She would accept! She would accept! He jumped up and approached her. But she jumped up too and retreated. He was not to win his prize so easily.
‘Please sit down,’ she murmured. ‘I must think it over,’ she said, apparently mastering herself. ‘Shall you be at chapel next Sunday morning?’
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘If I am there, and if I am wearing white roses in my hat, it will mean—’ She dropped her eyes.
‘Yes?’ he queried.
And she nodded.
‘And supposing you aren’t there?’
‘Then the Sunday after,’ she said.
He thanked her in his Hessian style.
‘I prefer that way of telling you,’ she smiled demurely. ‘It will avoid the necessity for another—so much—you understand?…’
‘Quite so, quite so!’ he agreed. ‘I quite understand.’
‘And if I DO see those roses,’ he went on, ‘I shall take upon myself to drop in for tea, may I?’
She paused.
‘In any case, you mustn’t speak to me coming out of chapel, PLEASE.’
As he walked home down Oldcastle Street he said to himself that the age of miracles was not past; also that, after all, he was not so old as the tale of his years would mathematically indicate.
III
Her absence from chapel on the next Sunday disagreed with him. However, Robert was away nearly all the week, and he had the house to himself to dream in. It frequently happened to him to pass by Miss Emery’s shop, but he caught no glimpse of her, and though he really was in serious need of writing-paper and envelopes, he dared not enter. Robert returned on the Friday.
