Part 69

‘Was it six inches off?’

‘No, not six inches.’

‘Nor three.’

‘It was quite one,’ she said with an ingenuous air.

‘I don’t call that very far.’

‘A miss is as good as a mile, says the time-honoured proverb; and it is not for us modern mortals to question its truth.’

‘How can you be so off-hand?’ broke out Somerset. ‘I love you wildly and desperately, Paula, and you know it well!’

‘I have never denied knowing it,’ she said softly.

‘Then why do you, with such knowledge, adopt an air of levity at such a moment as this! You keep me at arm’s-length, and won’t say whether you care for me one bit, or no. I have owned all to you; yet never once have you owned anything to me!’

‘I have owned much. And you do me wrong if you consider that I show levity. But even if I had not owned everything, and you all, it is not altogether such a grievous thing.’

‘You mean to say that it is not grievous, even if a man does love a woman, and suffers all the pain of feeling he loves in vain? Well, I say it is quite the reverse, and I have grounds for knowing.’

‘Now, don’t fume so, George Somerset, but hear me. My not owning all may not have the dreadful meaning you think, and therefore it may not be really such a grievous thing. There are genuine reasons for women’s conduct in these matters as well as for men’s, though it is sometimes supposed to be regulated entirely by caprice. And if I do not give way to every feeling--I mean demonstration--it is because I don’t want to. There now, you know what that implies; and be content.’

‘Very well,’ said Somerset, with repressed sadness, ‘I will not expect you to say more. But you do like me a little, Paula?’

‘Now!’ she said, shaking her head with symptoms of tenderness and looking into his eyes. ‘What have you just promised? Perhaps I like you a little more than a little, which is much too much! Yes,--Shakespeare says so, and he is always right. Do you still doubt me? Ah, I see you do!’

‘Because somebody has stood nearer to you to-night than I.’

‘A fogy like him!--half as old again as either of us! How can you mind him? What shall I do to show you that I do not for a moment let him come between me and you?’

‘It is not for me to suggest what you should do. Though what you should permit ME to do is obvious enough.’

She dropped her voice: ‘You mean, permit you to do really and in earnest what he only seemed to do in the play.’

Somerset signified by a look that such had been his thought.

Paula was silent. ‘No,’ she murmured at last. ‘That cannot be. He did not, nor must you.’

It was said none the less decidedly for being spoken low.

‘You quite resent such a suggestion: you have a right to. I beg your pardon, not for speaking of it, but for thinking it.’

‘I don’t resent it at all, and I am not offended one bit. But I am not the less of opinion that it is possible to be premature in some things; and to do this just now would be premature. I know what you would say--that you would not have asked it, but for that unfortunate improvisation of it in the play. But that I was not responsible for, and therefore owe no reparation to you now.... Listen!’

‘Paula--Paula! Where in the world are you?’ was heard resounding along the corridor in the voice of her aunt. ‘Our friends are all ready to leave, and you will surely bid them good-night!’

‘I must be gone--I won’t ring for you to be shown out--come this way.’

‘But how will you get on in repeating the play tomorrow evening if that interpolation is against your wish?’ he asked, looking her hard in the face.

‘I’ll think it over during the night. Come to-morrow morning to help me settle. But,’ she added, with coy yet genial independence, ‘listen to me. Not a word more about a--what you asked for, mind! I don’t want to go so far, and I will not--not just yet anyhow--I mean perhaps never. You must promise that, or I cannot see you again alone.’

‘It shall be as you request.’