‘I suppose I’m still asleep or something,’ she muttered. Then with a little smile she hid her face against him. ‘Anyway, it’s a heavenly dream,’ came in a muffled voice.
He rubbed his cheek affectionately against her hair.
‘It isn’t any dream, and you’re wide awake.’
‘But-but what about yesterday afternoon?’
She looked up again, and the smile was gone.
‘Yesterday afternoon? What about it?’ Julian asked.
A little of Alison’s angry bewilderment returned. She passed her hand over her forehead and pushed back her hair.
‘Did I or didn’t I see you with your arms round Rosalie, making love to her?’
An extremely complicated expression came over Julian’s face, and there was a slight pause.
‘As a matter of fact, my dear,’ he said at last, ‘you didn’t. I don’t want to sound ungallant, but I’m afraid what you probably saw was Rosalie with her arms round me, making love to me.’
‘It’s very much the same thing,’ Alison said sharply.
‘Oh, no, Alison. It’s something very different’
‘I don’t understand.’ She moved her head against him a little as though it ached, and at that he very tenderly stroked her hair.
‘I wouldn’t have chosen to be the one to tell the story, Alison dear,’ he said, ‘but the truth is the only thing possible between us now, and I think I had better be frank.’
She drew close against him.
‘Yes, please. We’ve both done enough of thinking we knew what the other meant and deciding we couldn’t say anything because it wouldn’t be fair to someone else and all that sort of thing.’
Julian smiled.
‘Very well, then. You’re thinking, aren’t you, that when Rosalie broke off her second engagement I was full of angry regrets at not being free to take things up with her again?’
‘Well, weren’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘But you were fearfully put out when Audrey told us about the broken engagement. I remember, because-because it made me so frightened and miserable.’ Alison’s voice quivered.
He bent his head and touched her cheek with his lips.
‘I was put out-not because I wanted Rosalie, but because I didn’t, by then. And I wished to God she’d stay contentedly tied up to someone else.’
‘Julian! You didn’t want Rosalie any more? When did you first find that out?’
‘It began on the night of that dance. Do you remember? You went off for a while with Simon.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Alison agreed a trifle grimly.
‘And I had a long talk with Rosalie.’ He stirred a little embarrassedly. ‘It’s horrid to have to say it, but she said the most beastly and spiteful things about you. She was angry, I suppose, because I refused to regard our marriage as more or less non-existent. She so obviously hated you, my poor little Alison, and I’d just been finding what a dear, warmhearted, loyal child you were.’
Alison pressed her head against him silently.
‘She tried so hard to disparage you in my eyes, and all the time she was really showing me odious side-lights on herself. I don’t know whether the sweet sanity of being with you had restored my judgment a little, or what, but everything she said seemed self-revealing. It wasn’t all done in one evening, of course. But that was the beginning. And then, when we came home-’
Julian stopped suddenly, and, gently putting his hand under her chin, he tilted up her face so that he could look into her eyes.
‘My little girl,’ he said quietly, ‘your sweetness and tenderness to me that night will be with me always. I had repaid your eagerness to help me with nothing but unkindness and impatience. You might well have been sick of the sight of me.’
‘Oh, no,’ murmured Alison, smiling to herself.
‘And instead, you were so dear and understanding. You even laughed at me very gently, so that I shouldn’t take myself with such fatuous seriousness. I cannot tell you how you seemed to me, in contrast to Rosalie’s behaviour that evening.’
Alison coloured faintly.
‘I don’t think I was specially nice,’ she said doubtfully.
‘No? Well, you were "nice" enough to make me fall in love with you,’ he said simply.
‘Oh, Julian-was it then?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was then that it started.’
‘But you wouldn’t’-her eyes fell-’you wouldn’t-stay with me when I asked you. You just said good night and went away.’
‘Darling’-he caught her close-’don’t you understand? It seemed to me just the supreme instance of your generosity-that you were offering me your companionship because you thought I was unhappy. It was a moment of blinding self-revelation, because it was then I suddenly realised that if I stayed with you it wasn’t just sympathy and companionship I wanted.’
‘I see.’ She hesitated, and then said in a low voice, It wasn’t just sympathy and companionship that I wanted either.’
He kissed her wordlessly at that-another of those passionate, overwhelming kisses that were yet so different from Simon’s way of kissing her.
‘And so, after that, you began to be quite relieved that Rosalie was safely engaged to someone else?’ Alison said presently.
‘Yes. It seemed to me for a short while that everything was going to work out marvellously. I was falling in love with you-and a divine experience it was-and I thought you were falling in love with me. Then came this bombshell of discovery that all the time you loved Simon, as I supposed.’
‘Poor Julian,’ Alison laughed softly. I never liked Simon much, you know. It-it was all on his side really.’
‘Yes, I see that now. But it seemed to me that I deserved no better than that you should love someone else. I had held you so lightly and carelessly when you could have been mine. It was only just that I should lose you. Sometimes I hoped you would get over it, and at other times I tried to tell myself that you must have whatever would make you happy.’
Alison stroked his arm.
‘You were prepared to let me go if it meant my happiness?’
‘Well, yes-of course. I hope I had so much decency left, It was the least I could do. And then, to complicate things abominably, Rosalie broke off her engagement,’
‘It’s funny to think how horrified we both were about that, and all the time we needn’t have bothered at all,’ Alison said thoughtfully.
‘Yes. It seems to me we’ve harrowed our feelings over lots of things without any need.’ Julian’s smile was rather rueful.
‘You mean I was stupid to misinterpret the scene yesterday with Rosalie?’ Alison said quickly.
‘No more stupid than I for misinterpreting the situation with Simon,’ Julian told her. ‘It must have seemed pretty conclusive. Actually, she rang me up at the office, you know, and-well, begged me to come along and see her as soon as I got away from that late interview. I had someone in the room at the time, and it was a little difficult to keep up a persistent refusal.’
‘And when you got there, of course, she staged a scene?’
Julian squeezed Alison tightly against him.
‘Yes. It was-very unpleasant altogether,’ he said a little nervously. ‘You don’t want to hear about it, do you?’
She shook her head with a smile.
‘I don’t want to hear about anything but that you love me.’
‘Well, you’re going to hear about that for the rest of your life,’ he told her earnestly.
At that moment, the telephone bell shrilled, and, leaning over, he took up the phone in one hand while he kept the other arm close round her.
Alison lay back, looking up at him, and loving every line of that thin, keen face.
‘All right, I’ll hold the line,’ she heard him say.
‘What is it?’ Alison whispered.
He smiled down at her.
‘Foreign telegram coming over the wire. Hello. Yes?’
She watched interestedly while surprise, vexation, and then something like amusement crossed his face.
‘No, no answer at present. I’ll call back later,’ he said, and replaced the receiver rather deliberately.