“It will be all right,” he tried to reassure her, with a tone of conviction, speaking into her ear, and of necessity clasping her more closely than before.
Either the words or the action had a very good effect. He heard a light sigh of relief. She spoke with a calmed ardour.
“Oh, I knew it would be all right from the first time you spoke to me! Yes, indeed, I knew directly you came up to me that evening. I knew it would be all right, if you only cared to make it so; but of course I could not tell if you meant it. 'Command me,' you said. Funny thing for a man like you to say. Did you really mean it? You weren't making fun of me?”
He protested that he had been a serious person all his life.
“I believe you,” she said ardently. He was touched by this declaration. “It's the way you have of speaking as if you were amused with people,” she went on. “But I wasn't deceived. I could see you were angry with that beast of a woman. And you are clever. You spotted something at once. You saw it in my face, eh? It isn't a bad face--say? You'll never be sorry. Listen--I'm not twenty yet. It's the truth, and I can't be so bad looking, or else--I will tell you straight that I have been worried and pestered by fellows like this before. I don't know what comes to them--”
She was speaking hurriedly. She choked, and then exclaimed, with an accent of despair:
Heyst had removed his arms from her suddenly, and had recoiled a little. “Is it my fault? I didn't even look at them, I tell you straight. Never! Have I looked at you? Tell me. It was you that began it.”
In truth, Heyst had shrunk from the idea of competition with fellows unknown, with Schomberg the hotel-keeper. The vaporous white figure before him swayed pitifully in the darkness. He felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
“I am afraid we have been detected,” he murmured. “I think I saw somebody on the path between the house and the bushes behind you.”
He had seen no one. It was a compassionate lie, if there ever was one. His compassion was as genuine as his shrinking had been, and in his judgement more honourable.
She didn't turn her head. She was obviously relieved.
“Would it be that brute?” she breathed out, meaning Schomberg, of course. “He's getting too forward with me now. What can you expect? Only this evening, after supper, he--but I slipped away. You don't mind him, do you? Why, I could face him myself now that I know you care for me. A girl can always put up a fight. You believe me? Only it isn't easy to stand up for yourself when you feel there's nothing and nobody at your back. There's nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has got to look after herself. When I left poor dad in that home--it was in the country, near a village--I came out of the gates with seven shillings and threepence in my old purse, and my railway ticket. I tramped a mile, and got into a train--”