And there his eloquence failed, leaving him gazing down at her and wondering whether she thought him foolish. She patted his hand, but she did not meet his eyes. "It's all right. Don't explain. I know what you're meaning to say."
"Do you?" He spoke doubtfully. "I think I was trying to ask you if we couldn't be happy together. I'm not married and I'm not engaged; but I'm not like the other men you mentioned."
"My dear boy, I never thought you were. If I had, you wouldn't have been here. You're honourable all the way through; I knew that the moment I saw you. Does that make you feel better?"
He laughed happily. "Much. Do you know what I believe I've been trying to ask you through all this maze of words? If I get permission from the doctor to stay out late tomorrow night, would you be gay and go with me to a theatre?"
Her eyes met his with gladness. "I should love it."
HAT evening at the theatre was the first conscious step in their experiment of being happy together. She received word from him at lunch-time that the doctor's permission had been granted and that he would call for her at seven. The news made her as excited as if she had never been to a theatre before in her life. She spent the afternoon before the mirror, brushing and re-brushing her hair, and in laying out all the pretty clothes which she knew men liked. It was three years since she had dressed with the deliberate intent that a man should admire her. Once to do that had been two-thirds of her life. To find herself doing it again seemed like waking from a long illness; she could hardly bring herself to believe that the monotony of sorrow was ended and that she was actually going to be happy again. She had been made to feel so long that to be happy would be disloyalty to past affections.
She locked her bedroom door, for fear any of the servants should guess how she was occupied. She was filled with an exultant shame that she should still be capable of valuing so highly a man's opinion of her appearance. "But I will be happy," she kept telling herself; "I have the right." And then, in a whisper, "Oh, little house, you have been so kind. Wish me luck and say that he'll think me nice."
Outside in the bare black cradle of the trees the November afternoon faded. Sparrows twittered of how winter was almost come. Against the cold melancholy of the London sky, like silhouettes crayoned on a wall of ice, roofs and chimneys stood smudged. In flickering pin-points of incandescence street-lamps wakened; night came drifting like a ship into harbour under shrouded sails.