“Your sister and brother-in-law,” he responded thoughtfully.
He was standing at her side at the top of the garden steps staring out into the garden and apparently not noticing the noisy passersby. If they stood there much longer, Ted, who had not been dancing, would join them. She did not want that. She would put off her dance with Ted until later. The next dance she would play herself and then perhaps dance again with Max. Once more from the strange security of his strongly swinging arms she would meet Ted’s eyes, watching and waiting. She must dance once more with Max. She had never really danced before. She would go to Ted at last and pass on the spirit of her dancing to him. But not yet.
“I will show you the front garden,” she said, running down the steps.
He joined her and they walked silently round the side of the house, through the kitchen yard and out into the deserted carriage drive. She thought she saw people on the front lawn and walked quickly, humming a little tune, on down the drive.
Max crunched silently along a little apart from her, singing to himself.
Both sides of the front gate were bolted back and their footsteps carried them straight out on to the asphalted avenue extending right and left, a dim tunnel of greenery, scarcely lit by the lamps out in the roadway. With a sudden sense of daring, Miriam determined to assume the deserted avenue as part of the garden.
The gate left behind, they made their way slowly along the high leafy tunnel.
They would walk to the end of the long avenue and back again. In a moment she would cease humming and make a remark. She tasted a new sense of ease, walking slowly along with this strange man without “making conversation.” He was taking her silence for granted. All her experience so far had been of companions whose uneasiness pressed unendurably for speech, and her talking had been done with an irritated sense of the injustice of aspersions on “women’s tongues,” while no man could endure a woman’s silence … even Ted, except when dancing; no woman could, except Minna, in Germany. Max must be foreign, of course, German—of course. She could, if she liked, talk of the stars to him. He would neither make jokes nor talk science and want her to admire him, until all the magic was gone. Her mood expanded. He had come just at the right moment. She would keep him with her until she had to face Ted. He was like a big ship towing the little barque of her life to its harbour.
His vague humming rose to a little song. It was German. It was the “Lorelei.” For a moment she forgot everything but pride in her ability to take her share in both music and words.
“You understand German!” he cried.
They had reached the end of the avenue and the starlit roadway opened ahead, lined with meadows.
“Ach, wie schön,” breathed Max.
“Wie schön.” Miriam was startled by the gay sound of her own voice. It sounded as if she were alone, speaking to herself. She looked up at the spangled sky. The freshening air streamed towards them from the meadows.
“We must go back,” she said easily, turning in again under the trees.
The limes seemed heavily scented after their breath of the open. They strolled dreamily along keeping step with each other. They would make it a long quiet way to the gate. Miriam felt strangely invisible. It was as if in a moment a voice would come from the clustering lime trees or from the cluster of stars in the imagined sky.
“Wie süss,” murmured Max, “ist treue Liebe.”
“How dear,” she translated mentally, “is true love.” Yes, that was it, that was true, the German phrase. Ted was dear, dear. But so far away. Coming and going, far away.
“Is it?” she said with a vague, sweet intonation, to hear more.
“Wie süss, wie süss,” he repeated firmly, flinging his arm across her shoulders.
The wildly shimmering leafage rustled and seemed to sing. She walked on horrified, cradled, her elbow resting in her companion’s hand as in a cup. She laughed, and her laughter mingled with the subdued lilting of the voice close at her side. Ted was waiting somewhere in the night for her. Ted. Ted. Not this stranger. But why was he not bold like this? Primly and gently she disengaged herself.
She and Ted would walk along through the darkness and it would shout to them. Daytime colours seemed to be shining through the night. … She turned abruptly to her companion.
“Aren’t the lime trees jolly?” she said conversationally.
“You will dance again with me?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“I must go so early.”
“Must you?”
“Tomorrow morning early I go abroad.”
“Hullo!”
“Where were you all that last dance?”
Nan Babington’s voice startled her as they came into the bright hall through the open front door.
She smiled towards Nan, sitting drearily with a brilliant smile on her face watching the dancers from a long chair drawn up near the drawing-room door, and passed on into the room with her hand on her partner’s arm. They had missed a dance and an interval. It must have been a Lancers and now there was another waltz.
Several couples were whirling gravely about. Amongst them she noted Bevan Seymour, upright and slender, dancing with Harriett with an air of condescending vivacity, his bright teeth showing all the time. Her eyes were ready for Ted. She was going to meet his for the first time—just one look, and then she would fly for her life anywhere, to anybody. And he would find her and make her look at him again. Ted. He was not there. People were glancing at her, curiously. She veiled her waiting eyes and felt their radiance stream through her, flooding her with strength from head to foot. How battered and ordinary everyone had looked, frail and sick, stamped with a pallor of
