"Jimmy, dear--what is the matter?" she asked in a quick whisper.

"Nothing--nothing at all," he replied savagely. "What should be the matter?"

"I hate a jealous disposition," she whispered, with a pout. "I suppose if a friend calls to see me I may just as well be civil to him. You'd like to shut me up altogether--never let me see a soul--wouldn't you?"

"I would," said Jimmy gloomily. "And I wanted so much to see you to-day; I had lots of things to talk about. We've had such a glorious time while he's been away; now it's all ended."

"I'm glad to see him back alive, at any rate," replied the girl. "The poor dear's had some narrow shaves."

"I wish they'd been narrower," muttered Jimmy. "Good-bye!"

"I can't let you go like this, Jimmy," she said, with the ready tears springing to her blue eyes. "I shouldn't sleep all night--and I should be a sight to-morrow. Won't you--won't you meet me somewhere--to-day, if you like."

"Of course I will," exclaimed Jimmy quickly. "Let it be somewhere where we can have a long talk together. Where shall it be?"

"The National Gallery--one of the middle rooms to the left--three o'clock," breathed Alice, with the air of an expert; and was gone. Jimmy went away happy.

At the National Gallery that afternoon he felt he was an object of suspicion to the officials on duty for a good hour; for of course he was too early, and equally of course she was too late. But she came at last, just as he had almost determined that he would go home, and would write her a cutting letter that should give her to understand that he was not to be played with; and his anger was gone in a moment. Ashby Feak had stayed to lunch, and had, she averred, given her a headache. "Some people would keep on talking about themselves, but now she would at last have a rest." They found a seat near that most restful of pictures--poor Fred Walker's "Harbour of Refuge"--and it fell about that Jimmy, when not looking at the girl, had his eyes fixed on the fine strong figure of the woman upon whom the elder one leans in the picture--that splendid symbol of all that is beautiful and wonderful in duty beautifully and wonderfully performed. It stirred something in him--woke now and then a fleeting thought of the woman who had never complained--the woman who had been grateful even to tears for what he had done. Meanwhile the b.u.t.terfly beside him, stifling a yawn prettily, was chattering.

"I'm sure I can't think why you should be so horrid about things, Jimmy.

I'm sure I've been a perfect angel all these months to you; there are times when I've been kinder to you than I am even to poor old Uncle Baffall; the only difference is that I haven't kissed you as I do Uncle Baffall, although with him it's only just on his forehead night and morning, and he generally rubs the place afterwards; I've seen him do it. Not that you'd wish me to kiss you, I'm sure--as we're only friends.

A girl in my position must expect, I suppose, to have all sorts of people coming after her; and I'm sure there are not half so many in my case as in dozens and dozens of other girls. I could tell you things about the shocking way some of 'em carry on that would make you write different sorts of stories. And as for Mr. Ashby Feak, if he's fond of me, poor dear----"

"Don't call him 'poor dear'!" snapped Jimmy quickly.

"I only do it to you--and perhaps to myself," said Alice. "He tells me that all the time he was out there, mixed up with the bears and things, and hearing them hoot at night--(at least, I'm not sure if it was the bears--but something hooted)--all that time he thought of me in the most extraordinary way; it was quite touching. I think it was quite n.o.ble of him, considering how much he had to do."

"What are you going to do about him?" asked Jimmy, after a pause.

"I don't know, I'm sure," she replied, "Of course, he's not said anything yet; he's only hinted. I suppose I owe him some return for having thought about me like that; it wouldn't be fair to let him do all that for nothing. Of course, I don't--I don't exactly like him; although, of course, I was very glad to see him; but I shall have to marry somebody--some day."

Jimmy looked morosely at the figure in the picture; it was no longer beautiful in his eyes. He thought bitterly of Moira and of the child; he saw this bright and radiant figure at his side drifting away from him, and going to some other man. It was cruel--it was wrong; there must be some way by which he could at least hold her--some way in which he might free himself.

Perhaps the most curious thing was that he had no intention at the time of telling her; he did not mean, as he had once meant, to stand before her an heroic, self-sacrificing figure; he wanted her, and not her worship, now. The object in his mind was to keep her away from Ashby Feak, and from all others, until such time as by some impossible means he should be free.

"Alice," he said at last, turning towards her, and so setting his back to the picture--"you don't love this man Feak?"

"Oh--I don't know," she retorted, with a shrug of her shoulders. "He's very nice--and he's brave--and I think he loves me. What more would anyone ask?"

"Alice--have you any love for me--real love, I mean--not this empty thing called friendship?"

"Jimmy!" It was of course what she had seemed to see trembling on his lips a score of times; she had had a thought, in fact, that it might be said this very afternoon; but she was very properly astonished for all that.

"I mean it," he said. "I love you as I love no one else on earth; there's no one like you anywhere--no one who understands me so perfectly as you do--no one who could help me with my work as you are able to help me. I love you."

She sat in a pensive att.i.tude, with her eyes upon the floor; when she spoke she did not look at him, but he was satisfied by the tenderness of her tones and the light blush she had been able to call to the aid of the situation, that he need fear no Ashby Feak. Keeping his back resolutely to that figure in the picture, and so shutting out all that was difficult and impossible, he took her hand a little shamefacedly, noting as he did so that she was careful to look round to see that they were not observed.

"Of course I always felt, Jimmy, that you did care for me; something in your manner seemed to suggest it," she whispered. "Also I think Aunt Baffall and Uncle Baffall have thought so too--although anything they said would make not the slightest difference to me. I love them, and all that kind of thing; but there's the end of it. As for Ashby Feak--well, he's very nice as a friend--and I've felt a little sorry for him; but anything else, Jimmy dear, was absolutely out of the question. And I must say that whatever happens I feel easier in my mind about everything."

"There's one thing, Alice," said Jimmy, a little lamely--"one thing that's rather important. I haven't mentioned it before, and it is a matter about which you'll have to trust me. Love means trust and confidence, you know--and I've got a secret that I must keep even from you."

She looked at him quickly and eagerly; he avoided her eyes. "It's nothing awful--is it?" she asked.

"Nothing at all awful," replied Jimmy casually. "It simply means that--well--for a time you would have--we should have, I mean--to wait--to be true to each other, knowing that things will come right in the future. You would have to take my hands in yours, in a manner of speaking, and to say that you trusted me; to walk blindly with me.

Afterwards I should be able to tell you why I had kept you and myself waiting. But not yet."

"Yes, Jimmy--that sounds very nice," replied Alice, a little doubtfully.

"Of course I'm not in any desperate hurry to get married--or--or anything of that sort; but why should we have to wait? If it's money, Aunt and Uncle Baffall are sure to be awfully good to me--and you're becoming a greater man every day. _Do_ tell me what it is, Jimmy? I won't breathe it to a living soul. Please, Jimmy dear?"

"It is impossible," replied Jimmy dramatically. "The difficulty--the secret difficulty--may be got rid of--sooner, in fact, than I imagine.

But you must trust me. Surely, if you love me, there should be no difficulty about that."

"Very well," said Alice after a pause. "It certainly sounds a little romantic--and I love romance. And now, I suppose"--she glanced quickly round the room, and then turned to him--"now, I suppose, we may consider ourselves--what's the horrid word?"

"Engaged," said Jimmy, with a smile, but with secret misgiving.

Thus it happened that for a week or two Jimmy went to the house in a new character; and Ashby Feak came no more. The Baffalls made no secret of their delight; indeed, Mrs. Baffall said, more than once, that she had "seen it coming for ages." And Jimmy, though very much in love, and though telling himself again and again that it would all come right, and that in some fashion or other the tangle could be smoothed out, yet went to the house like a thief--even looking about him with the needless fear that he might be watched. And now more than ever the quiet figure of the woman in black, with her dark head bent over a sleeping child, was with him; it sprang, indeed, between him and Alice when he would sometimes have taken her into his arms.

It was on a night when his misgivings had been deeper than usual, and when he had walked the streets for an hour or more, fighting out the problem for himself, and finding no answer, that he went back to his new rooms, to be told by the porter that a lady had come to see him, and had been shown up. She would not give a name; but she wanted to see Mr.

Larrance particularly, and would wait. Mr. Larrance was an old friend, she had said.

Jimmy climbed the stairs, wondering a little who could have called at such an hour.

He went in a little eagerly; although he had left her but an hour or two before, there was the vague possibility in his mind that this might be Alice. Always expecting something to happen that should show him a way out of the tangle, or increase it--for ever dreading that Alice should confront him with a full knowledge of all the circ.u.mstances--he felt, even as he mounted the stairs, that someone might have been to her, and might have told her; and that here she was, hot and indignant, to tax him with what he had done.

He opened the outer door, and went in. His visitor rose from a chair in which she had been seated, and came towards him; it was Moira. And in that moment--in the mere flash of a second, as it seemed--he saw with something of astonishment that her hands were held out towards him, and that she was smiling. So quick was it, that when, a moment later (perhaps at sight of something in his face, or some gesture, half of repulsion), she dropped her hands, and the smile faded from her eyes, he could almost have sworn that she had not moved at all.

"You didn't mind my waiting--Jimmy," she said, a little hesitatingly.

"I wanted so much to see you--and it doesn't matter--with us--does it?"

"What doesn't matter?" he asked dully.

"My coming to see you--so late," she replied; and again he thought that there was a tremor in her voice, and again it seemed almost as though she would have stretched out her hands towards him. She stood still, nervously clasping them together, her eyes devouring his face.

"Won't you sit down?" he asked, in a more kindly tone, as he moved a chair for her. She seated herself, and he crossed the room and looked out of the window; his back was almost turned towards her. "What can I do for you?"

"I have not seen you, Jimmy, since--since our marriage day," she said at last, in a low voice. "That--that seems funny--doesn't it; but then, of course--everything is different--isn't it?"

"Of course," he replied. "How have you got on--and how are you living?"

"Very quietly; it is a little place--a mere tiny cottage, far away from everyone; and Patience and I have spent a lot of time out of doors lately. Patience tells me I have roses coming in my cheeks for the first time in my life. That seems strange, too--doesn't it? But then, of course, I'm very happy."

"I'm glad to know that," he forced himself to say.

"Very happy indeed. There is--there's the child; such a lot to do for her. You don't ask about the child, Jimmy?"

"You are going to tell me about her," he said more gently.