Chapter 8

"I have outstayed all the rest," Lindsay said, with his hat and stick in his hand, in Alicia Livingstone's drawing-room, "because I want particularly to talk to you. They have left me precious little time," he added, glancing at his watch.

She had wondered when he came early in the formal Sunday noon hour for men's calls, since he had more casual privileges; and wondered more when he sat on with composure, as one who is master of the situation, while Major-Generals and Deputy Secretaries came and went. There was a mist in her brain as she talked to the Major-Generals and Deputy Secretaries—it did not in the least obscure what she found to say—and in the midst of it the formless idea that he must wish to attach a special importance to his visit. This took shape and line when they were alone, and he spoke of outsitting the others. It impelled her to walk to the window and open it. "You might stay to lunch," she said, addressing a pair of crows in altercation on the verandah.

"There is nearly half-an-hour before lunch," he said. "Can I convince you, in that time, I wonder, that I am not an absolute fool."

Alicia turned and came back to her sofa. She may have had a prevision of the need of support. "I hardly think," she said, drawing the long breath with which we try to subdue a tempest within, "that it would take so long." She tried to look at him, but her eyes would not carry above the violets in his button-hole.

"I've had a supreme experience," he said, "very strange and very lovely. I am living in it, moving in it, speaking in it," he added quickly, watching her face; "so don't, for God's sake, touch it roughly."

She lifted her hand in nervous, involuntary deprecation. "Why should you suppose I would touch it roughly?" There was that in her voice which cried put that she would rather not touch it at all; but Lindsay, on the brink of his confidence, could not suppose it—did not hear it. He knew her so well.

"A great many people will," he said. "I can't bear the thought of their fingers. That is one reason that brings me to you."

She faced him fully at this; her eyelids quivered, but she looked straight at him. It nerved her to be brought into his equation, even in the form which should finally be eliminated. She contrived a smile.

"I believe you know already," Lindsay cried.

"I have heard something. Don't be alarmed—not from people, from Miss Howe."

"Wonderful woman! I haven't told her."

"Is that always necessary? She has intuitions. In this case," Alicia went on, with immense courage, "I didn't believe them."

"Why?" he asked, enjoyingly. Anything to handle his delight—he would even submit it to analysis.

She hesitated—her business was in great waters, the next instant might engulf her. "It's so curiously unlike you," she faltered. "If she had been a duchess—a very exquisite person, or somebody very clever—remember I haven't seen her."

"You haven't, so I must forgive you invidious comparisons." Lindsay visaged the words with a smile, but they had an articulated hardness.

Alicia raised her eyebrows.

"What do you expect one to imagine?" she asked, with quietness.

"A miracle," he said, sombrely.

"Ah, that's difficult!"

There was silence for a moment between them, then she added, perversely,

"And, you know, faith is not what it was."

Duff sat biting his lips. Her dryness irritated him. He was accustomed to find in her fields of delicately blooming enthusiasms, and running watercourses where his satisfactions were ever reflected. Suddenly she seemed to emerge to her own consciousness, upon a summit from which she could look down upon the turmoil in herself and beyond it, to where he stood.