late she had been subject to these rushes of obscure hostility, the half-physical, half-moral shrinking from some indefinable element in his nature against which she was constrained to defend herself by perpetual pleasantry and evasion?
To Wyant, at any rate, the answer was not far to seek. His pale face reflected the disdain in hers as he returned ironically: “A thousand pardons; I know I’m not always in the key.”
“The key?”
“I haven’t yet acquired the Lynbrook tone. You must make allowances for my lack of opportunity.”
The retort on Justine’s lips dropped to silence, as though his words had in fact brought an answer to her inward questioning. Could it be that he was right—that her shrinking from him was the result of an increased sensitiveness to faults of taste that she would once have despised herself for noticing? When she had first known him, in her work at St. Elizabeth’s some three years earlier, his excesses of manner had seemed to her merely the boyish tokens of a richness of nature not yet controlled by experience. Though Wyant was somewhat older than herself there had always been an element of protection in her feeling for him, and it was perhaps this element which formed the real ground of her liking. It was, at any rate, uppermost as she returned, with a softened gleam of mockery: “Since you are so sure of my answer I hardly know why I should see you tomorrow.”
“You mean me to take it now?” he exclaimed.
“I don’t mean you to take it at all till it’s given—above all not to take it for granted!”
His jutting brows drew together again. “Ah, I can’t split hairs with you. Won’t you put me out of my misery?”
She smiled, but not unkindly. “Do you want an an?sthetic?”
“No—a clean cut with the knife!”
“You forget that we’re not allowed to despatch hopeless cases—more’s the pity!”
He flushed to the roots of his thin hair. “Hopeless cases? That’s it, then—that’s my answer?”
They had reached the point where, at the farther edge of the straggling settlement, the tiled roof of the railway-station fronted the post-office cupola; and the shriek of a whistle now reminded Justine that the spot was not propitious to private talk. She halted a moment before speaking.
“I have no answer to give you now but the one in my note—that I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“But if you’re sure of knowing tomorrow you must know now!”
Their eyes met, his eloquently pleading, hers kind but still impenetrable. “If I knew now, you should know too. Please be content with that,” she rejoined.
“How can I be, when a day may make such a difference? When I know that every influence about you is fighting against me?”
The words flashed a refracted light far down into the causes of her own uncertainty.
“Ah,” she said, drawing a little away from him, “I’m not so sure that I don’t like a fight!”
“Is that why you won’t give in?” He moved toward her with a despairing gesture. “If I let you go now, you’re lost to me!”
She stood her ground, facing him with a quick lift of the head. “If you don’t let me go I certainly am,” she said; and he drew back, as if conscious of the uselessness of the struggle. His submission, as usual, had a disarming effect on her irritation, and she held out her hand. “Come tomorrow at three,” she said, her voice and manner suddenly seeming to give back the hope she had withheld from him.
He seized on her hand with an inarticulate murmur; but at the same moment a louder whistle and the thunder of an approaching train reminded her of the impossibility of prolonging the scene. She was ordinarily careless of appearances, but while she was Mrs. Amherst’s guest she did not care to be seen romantically loitering through the twilight with Stephen Wyant; and she freed herself with a quick goodbye.
He gave her a last look, hesitating and imploring; then, in obedience to her gesture, he turned away and strode off in the opposite direction.
As soon as he had left her she began to retrace her steps toward Lynbrook House; but instead of traversing the whole length of the village she passed through a turnstile in the park fencing, taking a more circuitous but quieter way home.
She walked on slowly through the dusk, wishing to give herself time to think over her conversation with Wyant. Now that she was alone again, it seemed to her that the part she had played had been both inconsistent and undignified. When she had written to Wyant that she would see him on the morrow she had done so with the clear understanding that she was to give, at that meeting, a definite answer to his offer of marriage; and during her talk with Bessy she had suddenly, and, as it seemed to her, irrevocably, decided that the answer should be favourable. From the first days of her acquaintance with Wyant she had appreciated his intelligence and had been stimulated by his zeal for his work. He had remained only six months at Saint Elizabeth’s, and though his feeling for her had even then been manifest, it had been kept from expression by the restraint of their professional relation, and by her absorption in her duties. It was only when they had met again at Lynbrook that she had begun to feel a personal interest in him. His youthful promise seemed nearer fulfillment than she had once thought possible, and the contrast he presented to the young men in Bessy’s train was really all in his favour. He had gained in strength and steadiness without losing his high flashes of enthusiasm; and though, even now, she was not in love with him, she began to feel that the union of their common interests might create a life full and useful enough to preclude the possibility of vague repinings. It would, at any rate, take her out of the stagnant circle of her present existence, and restore her to contact with the fruitful energies of life.
All this had seemed quite clear when she wrote her letter; why, then, had she not made use of their chance encounter to give her answer, instead of capriciously postponing it? The act might have been that of a self- conscious girl in her teens; but neither inexperience nor coquetry had prompted it. She had merely yielded to the spirit of resistance that Wyant’s presence had of late aroused in her; and the possibility that this resistance might be due to some sense of his social defects, his lack of measure and facility, was so humiliating that for a moment she stood still in the path, half-meaning to turn back and overtake him–-
As she paused she was surprised to hear a man’s step behind her; and the thought that it might be Wyant’s brought about another revulsion of feeling. What right had he to pursue her in this way, to dog her steps even into the Lynbrook grounds? She was sure that his persistent attentions had already attracted the notice of Bessy’s
