An instinctive longing quickened her steps and made her heart quicken in sympathy. She passed the Common with a sense of embarrassment, observing, with one quick, diffident glance, that nothing remained of the merry-making of last week but the beaten track of the passage of many feet, blanched squares and circles where the booths and tents had stood, and heaps of debris and smoking ashes upon the worn, burned-out grass; but the littered desolation of the scene gave her no pang, the departure of its flashing cohorts no regret, for in her heart a memory remained which was not blanched, or trampled, or burned out, but which flamed each day more brightly than before.
Her desire to see Denis intensified, filled her slender figure with a rare aether, setting a mist upon her eyes and a freshness upon her cheeks like the new bloom upon a wild rose; her aspiration rose into her throat and stifled her with a feeling like bitter grief.
Once in the town, she lingered over her shopping, delaying a little by the windows, hopeful that a light touch upon her arm might suddenly arouse her, taking the longest possible routes and traversing as many streets as she dared, in the hope of encountering Denis. But still she did not see him, and now, instead of veiling her glance, she began to gaze anxiously about her, as though she entreated him to come to her to end the unhappiness of her suspense. Slowly the list of her commissions dwindled and, by the time she had made her last purchase, a small furrow of anxiety perplexed her smooth brow, while her mouth drooped plaintively at its corners as her latent longing now took possession of her. Denis did not love her and for that reason he would not come to her! She had been mad to consider that he could continue to care for her, a creature so little fitted to his charm and graceful beauty; and, with the bitter certainty of despair, she became aware that he would never see her again, that she would be left like a wounded bird, fluttering feebly and alone.
Now it was impossible to delay her return, for, with a sudden pathetic dignity, she felt she could not be seen loitering about the streets, as though she lowered herself commonly to look for a man who had disdained her; and she turned quickly, with the reticule of parcels dragging upon her arm like a heavy weight as she moved off towards home. She now chose the quiet streets, to hide herself as much as possible, feeling miserably that if Denis did not wish her, she would not thrust herself upon him; and in a paroxysm of sad renunciation, she kept her head lowered and occupied the most inconsiderable space possible upon the pavement which she traversed.
She had so utterly resigned herself to not seeing Denis that when he suddenly appeared before her from the passage leading out of the new station, it was as if a phantom had issued from the unsubstantial air. She raised her downcast eyes as though, startled and unbelieving, they refused to allow the sudden transport of the vision to pass into her being, to flood it with a joy which might be unreal, merely the delusive mirage of her hopes. But no phantom could hurry forward so eagerly, or smile so captivatingly, or take her hand so warmly, so closely, that she felt the pulse of the hot blood in the ardent, animate hand. It was Denis. Yet he had no right to be so gay and elated, so care-free and dashing, his rapture untouched by any memory of their separation. Did he not understand that she had been forced to wait through weary days of melancholy, had only a moment ago been plunged in sad despondency, even to the consideration
of her abandonment?
"Mary, it's like heaven to see you again, and you've the look of one of the angels up above! I only got back home late last night and I came the first moment I could get away. How lucky to catch you like this!" he exclaimed, fervently fixing his eye upon hers.
Immediately she forgave him. Her despondency melted under the warmth of his flow of high spirits; her sadness perished in the gay infection of his smile; instead, a sudden, disturbing realisation of the sweetly intimate circumstances of their last meeting seized her and a mood of profound shyness overtook her.
She blushed to see in the open day this young gallant who, cloaked by the benign darkness, had pressed her so closely in his arms, who had been the first to kiss her, to touch caressingly her virgin body.
Did he know all that she had thought of him since then? All the throbbing recollections of the past and the mad, dancing visions of the future that had obsessed her? She dared not look at him.
"I'm so delighted to see you again, Mary, I could jump for joy! Are you glad to see me again?" he continued.
"Yes," she said, in a low, embarrassed voice.
“I’ve so much to tell you that I couldn't put into my letter. I didn't want to say too much for fear it would be intercepted. Did you get it?"
"I got it safely, but you mustn't write again," she whispered. "I would be afraid for you to do that."
What he had said was so indiscreet that the thought of what he had left unsaid made a still higher colour mantle in her cheeks.
“I won't need to write again for a long time," he laughed meaningly. "Sure, I'll be seeing you ever so often now. I'll be at the office for a month or two until my autumn trip; and speaking of business, Mary dear, you've brought me the luck of a charm I've twice as many orders this time. If ye keep inspirin' me like that, you'll make a fortune for me in no time. Bedad! You'll have to meet me if only to share the profits!"
Mary looked around uneasily, feeling already in the quiet street a horde of betraying eyes upon her, sensing in his impetuosity how little he understood her position.
"Denis, I'm afraid I can't wait any longer. We might be seen here."
"Is it a crime to talk to a young man, then in the morning, anyway," he replied softly, meaningly. "Sure, there's no disgrace in that. And if ye'd rather walk I could tramp to John o' Groats with you! Let me carry your parcels for a bit of the way, Ma'am."
Mary shook her head. "People would notice us more than ever," she replied timidly, already conscious of the eyes of the town upon her, during that reckless promenade.
He looked at her tenderly, protectingly, then allowed his resourceful glance to travel up and down the street with what to her devoted eyes, seemed like the intrepid gaze of an adventurer in a hostile land.
"Mary, my dear," he said presently, in a jocular tone, "you don't know the man you're with yet. Toyle never knows defeat;' that's my motto. Come along in here!" He took her arm firmly and led her a few doors down the street; then, before she realised it and could think even to resist, he had drawn her inside the cream-coloured doors of Bertorelli's cafe. She paled with apprehension, feeling that she had finally passed the limits of respectability, that the depth of her dissipation had now been reached, and looking reproachfully into Denis' smiling face, in a shocked tone she gasped:
"Oh, Denis, how could you!"
Yet, as she looked around the clean, empty shop, with its rows of marble-topped tables, its small scintillating mirrors, and brightly papered walls, while she allowed herself to be guided to one of the plush stalls that appeared exactly like her pew in church, she felt curiously surprised, as if she had expected to find a sordid den suited appropriately to the debauched revels that must, if tradition were to be believed, inevitably be connected with a place like this.
Her bewilderment was increased by the appearance of a fat, fatherly man with a succession of chins, each more amiable than the preceding honest one, who came up to them, smilingly, bowed with a quick bend of the region which had once been his waist, and said: