She opened it. Warkworth appeared on the threshold, and the high moon behind him threw a bright ray into the dim hall, where all but one faint light had been extinguished. She pointed to the drawing-room.
“I will come directly. Let me just go and ask Léonie to sit up.”
Warkworth went into the drawing-room. Julie opened the dining-room door. Madame Bornier was engaged in washing and putting away the china and glass which had been used for Julie’s modest refreshments.
“Léonie, you won’t go to bed? Major Warkworth is here.”
Madame Bornier did not raise her head.
“How long will he be?”
“Perhaps half an hour.”
“It is already past midnight.”
“Léonie, he goes tomorrow.”
“Très bien. Mais—sais-tu, ma chère, ce n’est pas convenable, ce que tu fais là!”
And the older woman, straightening herself, looked her foster-sister full in the face. A kind of watchdog anxiety, a sulky, protesting affection breathed from her rugged features.
Julie went up to her, not angrily, but rather with a pleading humility.
The two women held a rapid colloquy in low tones—Madame Bornier remonstrating, Julie softly getting her way.
Then Madame Bornier returned to her work, and Julie went to the drawing-room.
Warkworth sprang up as she entered. Both paused and wavered. Then he went up to her, and roughly, irresistibly, drew her into his arms. She held back a moment, but finally yielded, and clasping her hands round his neck she buried her face on his breast.
They stood so for some minutes, absolutely silent, save for her hurried breathing, his head bowed upon hers.
“Julie, how can we say goodbye?” he whispered, at last.
She disengaged herself, and, seeing his face, she tried for composure.
“Come and sit down.”
She led him to the window, which he had thrown open as he entered the room, and they sat beside it, hand in hand. A mild April night shone outside. Gusts of moist air floated in upon them. There were dim lights and shadows in the garden and on the shuttered façade of the great house.
“Is it forever?” said Julie, in a low, stifled voice. “Goodbye—forever?”
She felt his hand tremble, but she did not look at him. She seemed to be reciting words long since spoken in the mind.
“You will be away—perhaps a year? Then you go back to India, and then—”
She paused.
Warkworth was physically conscious, as it were, of a letter he carried in his coat-pocket—a letter from Lady Blanche Moffatt which had reached him that morning, the letter of a grande dame, reduced to undignified remonstrance by sheer maternal terror—terror for the health and life of a child as fragile and ethereal as a wild rose in May. Reports had reached her; but no—they could not be true! She bade him be thankful that not a breath of suspicion had yet touched Aileen. As for herself, let him write and reassure her at once. Otherwise—
And the latter part of the letter conveyed a veiled menace that Warkworth perfectly understood.
No—in that direction, no escape; his own past actions closed him in. And henceforth, it was clear, he must walk more warily.
But how blame himself for these feelings of which he was now conscious towards Julie Le Breton—the strongest, probably, that a man not built for passion would ever know. His relation towards her had grown upon him unawares, and now their own hands were about to cut it at the root. What blame to either of them? Fate had been at work; and he felt himself glorified by a situation so tragically sincere, and by emotions of which a month before he would have secretly held himself incapable.
Resolutely, in this last meeting with Julie, he gave these emotions play. He possessed himself of her cold hands as she put her desolate question—“And then?”—and kissed them fervently.
“Julie, if you and I had met a year ago, what happened in India would never have happened. You know that!”
“Do I? But it only hurts me to think it away like that. There it is—it has happened.”
She turned upon him suddenly.
“Have you any picture of her?”
He hesitated.
“Yes,” he said, at last.
“Have you got it here?”
“Why do you ask, dear one? This one evening is ours.”
And again he tried to draw her to him. But she persisted.
“I feel sure you have it. Show it me.”
“Julie, you and you only are in my thoughts!”
“Then do what I ask.” She bent to him with a wild, entreating air; her lips almost touched his cheek. Unwillingly he drew out a letter-case from his breast-pocket, and took from it a little photograph which he handed to her.
She looked at it with eager eyes. A face framed, as it were, out of snow and fire lay in her hand, a thing most delicate, most frail, yet steeped in feeling and significance—a child’s face with its soft curls of brown hair, and the upper lip raised above the white, small teeth, as though in a young wonder; yet behind its sweetness, what suggestions of a poetic or tragic sensibility! The slender neck carried the little head with girlish dignity; the clear, timid eyes seemed at once to shrink from and trust the spectator.
Julie returned the little picture, and hid her face with her hands. Warkworth watched her uncomfortably, and at last drew her hands away.
“What are you thinking of?” he said, almost with violence. “Don’t shut me out!”
“I am not jealous now,” she said, looking at him piteously. “I don’t hate her. And if she knew all—she couldn’t—hate me.”
“No one could hate her. She is an angel. But she is not my Julie!” he said, vehemently, and he thrust the little picture into his pocket again.
“Tell me,” she said, after a pause, laying her hand on his knee, “when did you begin to think of me—differently? All the winter, when we used to meet, you never—you never loved me then?”
“How, placed as I was, could I let myself think of love? I only knew that I wanted to see you, to talk to you, to write to you—that the day when we did not
