With a cigar in his mouth, Dan passed slowly to and fro against the lighted windows, and looked up tenderly at the gray sky and the small flying birds. There was a glow in his face, for, with a total cessation of time, he was back in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, and the rain was on the roof.
In one of those rare moods in which the least subjective mind becomes that of a mystic, he told himself that this hour had waited for him from the beginning of time--had bided patiently at the crossroads until he came up with it at last. All his life he had been travelling to meet it, not in ignorance, but with half-unconscious knowledge, and all the while the fire had burned brightly on the hearth, and Betty had knelt upon the flat stones drying her hair. Again it seemed to him that he had never looked into a woman's face before, and the shame of his wandering fancies was heavy upon him. He called himself a fool because he had followed for a day the flutter of Virginia's gown, and a dotard for the many loves he had sworn to long before. In the twilight he saw Betty's eyes, grave, accusing, darkened with reproach; and he asked himself half hopefully if she cared--if it were possible for a moment that she cared. There had been humour in her smile, but, for all his effort, he could bring back no deeper emotion than pity or disdain--and it seemed to him that both the pity and the disdain were for himself.
The library window was lifted suddenly, as the Major called out to him that “supper was on its way”; and, with an impatient movement of the shoulders, he tossed his cigar into the grass and went indoors.
The next afternoon he rode over to Uplands, and found Virginia alone in the dim, rose-scented parlour, where the quaint old furniture stood in the gloom of a perpetual solemnity. The girl, herself, made a bright spot of colour against the damask curtains, and as he looked at her he felt the same delight in her loveliness that he felt in Great-aunt Emmeline's. Virginia had become a picture to him, and nothing more.
When he entered she greeted him with her old friendliness, gave him both her cool white hands, and asked him a hundred shy questions about the countries over sea. She was delicately cordial, demurely glad.