She knew, too, riding across the fields between Sybil and O’Hara, that he sometimes watched her with a curious bright light in his blue eyes. He said nothing; he betrayed in no way the feeling behind all that sudden, quiet declaration on the terrace of Brook Cottage. She began to see that he was (as Sabine had discovered almost at once) a very clever and dangerous man. It was not alone because of the strange, almost physical, effect he had upon people—an effect which was almost as if his presence took possession of you completely—but because he had patience and knew how to be silent. If he had rushed in, recklessly and clumsily, everything would have been precipitated and ruined at once. There would have been a scene ending with his dismissal and Olivia, perhaps, would have been free; but he had never touched her. It was simply that he was always there, assuring her in some mysterious way that his emotions had not changed, that he still wanted her more than anything in all the world. And to a woman who was romantic by nature and had never known any romance, it was a dangerous method.
There came a morning when, waiting by the gravel-pit, O’Hara saw that there was only one rider coming toward him across the fields from Pentlands. At first it occurred to him that it must be Sybil coming alone, without her mother, and the old boredom and despair engulfed him swiftly. It was only when the rider came nearer and he saw the white star in the forehead of her horse that he knew it was Olivia herself. That she came alone, knowing what he had already told her, he took as a sign of immense importance.
This time he did not wait or ride slowly toward her. He galloped impatiently as a boy across the wet fields to meet her.
She had the old look of radiance about her and a shyness, too, that made her seem at first a trifle cool and withdrawn. She told him quietly, “Sybil didn’t come this morning. She went out very early to fish with Jean de Cyon. The mackerel are beginning to run in the open water off the marshes.”
There was an odd, strained silence and O’Hara said, “He’s a nice boy … de Cyon.” And then, with a heroic effort to overcome the shyness which she always managed to impose upon him, he said in a low voice, “But I’m glad she didn’t come. I’ve wanted it to be like this all along.”
She did not say archly that he must not talk in this vein. It was a part of her fascination that she was too honest and intelligent not to dispense with such coquetry. He had had enough of coquetry from cheap women and had wearied of it long ago. Besides, she had wanted it “like this” herself and she knew that with O’Hara it was silly to pretend, because sooner or later he always found her out. They were not children, either of them. They both knew what they were doing, that it was a dangerous, even a reckless thing; and yet the very sense of excitement made the adventure as irresistible to the one as to the other.
For a little time they rode in silence, watching the dark hoofs of the horses as they sent up little showers of glittering dew from the knee-deep grass and clover, and presently as they turned out of the fields into the path that led into the birch woods, he laughed and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
Smiling, she replied, “I wouldn’t sell them for millions.”
“They must be very precious.”
“Perhaps … precious to me, and to no one else.”
“Not to anyone at all. …”
“No. … I don’t think they’d interest anyone. They’re not too cheerful.”
At this he fell silent again, with an air of brooding and disappointment. For a time she watched him, and presently she said, “You mustn’t sulk on a morning like this.”
“I’m not sulking. … I was only … thinking.”
She laughed. “A penny for your thoughts.”
He did not laugh. He spoke with a sudden intensity. “They, too, are worth a million … more than that … only I’ll share them with you. I wouldn’t share them with anyone else.”
At the sound of his voice, a silly wave of happiness swept through Olivia. She thought, “I’m being young and ridiculous and enjoying myself.”
Aloud she said, “I haven’t a penny, but if you’ll trust me until tomorrow?”
And then he turned to her abruptly, the shyness gone and in its place an emotion close to irritation and anger. “Why buy them?” he asked. “You know well enough what they are. You haven’t forgotten what I told you on the terrace at Brook Cottage. … It’s grown more true every day … all of it.” When he saw that she had become suddenly grave, he said, “And what about you?”
“You know how impossible it is.”
“Nothing is impossible … nothing. Besides, I don’t mean the difficulties. Those will come later. … I only mean your own feelings.”
“Can’t you see that I like you? … I must like you else I wouldn’t have come alone this morning.”
“Like me,” he echoed with bitterness. “I’m not interested in having you like me!” And when she made no reply, he added, almost savagely, “Why do you keep me away from you? Why do you always put a little wall about yourself?”
“Do I?” she asked, stupidly, and with a sense of pain.
“You are cool and remote even when you laugh.”
“I don’t want to be—I hate cold people.”
For a moment she caught a quick flash of the sudden bad
