‘Now,’ she said suddenly, with a sort of desperation, rising from her chair and seeming to command Rodney to fulfil his part. He drew the curtain instantly, and she made no attempt to stop him. Their eyes at once sought the same spot beneath the lamp-post.
‘He’s not there!’ she exclaimed.
No one was there. William threw the window up and looked out. The wind rushed into the room, together with the sound of distant wheels, footsteps hurrying along the pavement, and the cries of sirens hooting down the river.
‘Denham!’ William cried.
‘Ralph!’ said Katharine, but she spoke scarcely louder than she might have spoken to some one in the same room. With their eyes fixed upon the opposite side of the road, they did not notice a figure close to the railing which divided the garden from the street. But Denham had crossed the road and was standing there. They were startled by his voice close at hand.
‘Rodney!’
‘There you are! Come in, Denham.’ Rodney went to the front door and opened it. ‘Here he is,’ he said, bringing Ralph with him into the dining-room where Katharine stood, with her back to the open window. Their eyes met for a second. Denham looked half dazed by the strong light, and, buttoned in his overcoat, with his hair ruffled across his forehead by the wind, he seemed like somebody rescued from an open boat out at sea. William promptly shut the window and drew the curtains. He acted with a cheerful decision as if he were master of the situation, and knew exactly what he meant to do.
‘You’re the first to hear the news, Denham,’ he said. ‘Katharine isn’t going to marry me, after all.’
‘Where shall I put—’ Ralph began vaguely, holding out his hat and glancing about him; he balanced it carefully against a silver bowl that stood upon the side-board. He then sat himself down rather heavily at the head of the oval dinner-table. Rodney stood on one side of him and Katharine on the other. He appeared to be presiding over some meeting from which most of the members were absent. Meanwhile, he waited, and his eyes rested upon the glow of the beautifully polished mahogany table.
‘William is engaged to Cassandra,’ said Katharine briefly.
At that Denham looked up quickly at Rodney. Rodney’s expression changed. He lost his self-possession. He smiled a little nervously, and then his attention seemed to be caught by a fragment of melody from the floor above. He seemed for a moment to forget the presence of the others. He glanced towards the door.
‘I congratulate you,’ said Denham.
‘Yes, yes. We’re all mad—quite out of our minds, Denham,’ he said. ‘It’s partly Katharine’s doing—partly mine.’ He looked oddly round the room as if he wished to make sure that the scene in which he played a part had some real existence. ‘Quite mad,’ he repeated. ‘Even Katharine—’ His gaze rested upon her finally, as if she, too, had changed from his old view of her. He smiled at her as if to encourage her. ‘Katharine shall explain,’ he said, and giving a little nod to Denham, he left the room.
Katharine sat down at once, and leant her chin upon her hands. So long as Rodney was in the room the proceedings of the evening had seemed to be in his charge, and had been marked by a certain unreality. Now that she was alone with Ralph she felt at once that a constraint had been taken from them both. She felt that they were alone at the bottom of the house, which rose, story upon story, upon the top of them.
‘Why were you waiting out there?’ she asked.
‘For the chance of seeing you,’ he replied.
‘You would have waited all night if it hadn’t been for William. It’s windy too. You must have been cold. What could you see? Nothing but our windows.’
‘It was worth it. I heard you call me.’
‘I called you?’ She had called unconsciously.
‘They were engaged this morning,’ she told him, after a pause.
‘You’re glad?’ he asked.
She bent her head. ‘Yes, yes,’ she sighed. ‘But you don’t know how good he is—what he’s done for me—’ Ralph made a sound of understanding. ‘You waited there last night too?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I can wait,’ Denham replied.
The words seemed to fill the room with an emotion which Katharine connected with the sound of distant wheels, the footsteps hurrying along the pavement, the cries of sirens hooting down the river, the darkness and the wind. She saw the upright figure standing beneath the lamp-post.
‘Waiting in the dark,’ she said, glancing at the window, as if he saw what she was seeing. ‘Ah, but it’s different—’ She broke off. ‘I’m not the person you think me. Until you realize that it’s impossible—’
Placing her elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and down her finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-bound books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herself as to seem remote from him also, there was something distant and abstract about her which exalted him and chilled him at the same time.
‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know you. I’ve never known you.’
‘Yet perhaps you know me better than any one else,’ she mused.
Some detached instinct made her aware that she was gazing at a book which belonged by rights to some other part of the house. She walked over to the shelf, took it down, and returned to her seat, placing the book on the table between them. Ralph opened it and looked at the portrait of a man with a voluminous white shirt-collar, which formed the frontispiece.
‘I say I do know you, Katharine,’ he affirmed, shutting the book. ‘It’s only for moments that I go mad.’
‘Do you call two whole nights a moment?’
‘I swear to you that now, at this instant, I see you precisely as you are. No one has ever known you as I know
