She hesitated, resting her hand on the teacher’s desk. Her eyes were kind, but he thought her tone was cold.
“This easy life is rather out of my line,” she said at length, with a smile that draped her words in vagueness.
Amherst looked at her again—she seemed to be growing remote and inaccessible. “You mean that you don’t want to stay?”
His tone was so abrupt that it called forth one of her rare blushes. “No—not that. I have been very happy with Cicely—but soon I shall have to be doing something else.”
Why was she blushing? And what did her last phrase mean? “Something else—?” The blood hummed in his ears—he began to hope she would not answer too quickly.
She had sunk into the seat behind the desk, propping her elbows on its lid, and letting her interlaced hands support her chin. A little bunch of violets which had been thrust into the folds of her dress detached itself and fell to the floor.
“What I mean is,” she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to Amherst’s, “that I’ve had a great desire lately to get back to real work—my special work…. I’ve been too idle for the last year—I want to do some hard nursing; I want to help people who are miserable.”
She spoke earnestly, almost passionately, and as he listened his undefined fear was lifted. He had never before seen her in this mood, with brooding brows, and the darkness of the world’s pain in her eyes. All her glow had faded—she was a dun thrush-like creature, clothed in semi-tints; yet she seemed much nearer than when her smile shot light on him.
He stood motionless, his eyes absently fixed on the bunch of violets at her feet. Suddenly he raised his head, and broke out with a boyish blush: “Could it have been Wyant who was trying to see you?”
“Dr. Wyant—trying to see me?” She lowered her hands to the desk, and sat looking at him with open wonder.
He saw the irrelevance of his question, and burst, in spite of himself, into youthful laughter.
“I mean—It’s only that an unknown visitor called at the house yesterday, and insisted that you must have arrived. He seemed so annoyed at not finding you, that I thought…I imagined…it must be some one who knew you very well…and who had followed you here…for some special reason….”
Her colour rose again, as if caught from his; but her eyes still declared her ignorance. “Some special reason–-?”
“And just now,” he blurted out, “when you said you might not stay much longer with Cicely—I thought of the visit—and wondered if there was some one you meant to marry….”
A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened under the veil she had lowered. “No—I don’t mean to marry,” she said, half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.
Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine—yet Amherst did not dare to speak.
She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted street. “It’s growing dark —I must go home,” she said.
“Yes,” he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires that he heard—the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living? All within him was flood-tide: this was the top of life, surely—to feel her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: “This is the mate of my mind.”
He began again abruptly. “Wouldn’t you marry, if it gave you the chance to do what you say—if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to make things better…for a great many people…as no one but yourself could do it?”
It was a strange way of putting his case: he was aware of it before he ended. But it had not occurred to him to tell her that she was lovely and desirable—in his humility he thought that what he had to give would plead for him better than what he was.
The effect produced on her by his question, though undecipherable, was extraordinary. She stiffened a little, remaining quite motionless, her eyes on the street.
“You!“ she just breathed; and he saw that she was beginning to tremble.
His wooing had been harsh and clumsy—he was afraid it had offended her, and his hand trembled
