Clare's night was as troubled as the previous one; and, as on that night, her ear smarted and throbbed with pain which in comparison with the great bulk of her fears, was ridiculously small, but which was frightening in its petty, persistent malice.
Morning, again, was some relief, for the daylight hours crawled less slowly than the dark. This day she must see Niall; she did not know how she could live through another twenty−four hours if she should miss him again. But she believed he would be there this afternoon. He had told Jennifer to go to Brackenbine this night. Clare never doubted that Jennifer would obey. She saw her during the morning, crossing the Great Hall, just behind a knot of her form−mates. The younger girl's expression was all but beatific; her eyes seemed extraordinarily large and brilliant and there was a settled calm on her face, the tranquil assurance of one who can imagine no bounds to the happiness that buoys her up; Clare recognised that look for the expression of a feeling she herself had known. It proved to her that Jennifer's subjection was complete: heart, mind and body, she was Niall's slave and she was drunk with the honey−dew of the reward he offered for such entire submission.
The afternoon was as cold and dismal as the one before. No one, either teacher or pupil, who saw Clare going out of the building after lunch remarked on her setting out. To her, filled as she was with the strange wrong into which her life had fallen, her deception seemed transparent; but to the school, it seemed, nothing had happened to break in the slightest the monotony of term. She walked at her best speed up the road and along the muddy, plashing ride through the wood. As she stripped off her macintosh in the hall of Brackenbine she saw that this time Niall was at home.
His wet coat lay on the chest in the hall; there were slight movements audible from upstairs, and when she set foot on the bottom step, Grim came bouncing down with complacent little purrs to meet her.
Niall was at his bench in the studio. Her first glance went straight to the loose sheets of paper that lay among his tools there, then to the open door of the press she had investigated the day before. He laid down the tool he was using and grinned.
“By the pricking of my thumbs...” he declaimed. “Or should I say, By the tingling of your ear?”
“You do know, then,” she breathed, startled at once into an admission of a belief in his influence over her which she had meant to deny.
“Know what?” he asked, smiling cheerfully, inviting her to come close.. “I know you're angry. That sticks out a mile. I know you know I've been thinking about you— yes, even talking about you. It's a sign of that when your ear burns, isn't it? An old superstition, you know. Come here and let me look at it!”
But Clare halted when she was six feet away from him, resting her hand on the corner of his bench. It was not easy to speak. His mocking tone, and his half−gay, half−malicious smile put something like a wall of glass between them. She looked at the small intricately−shaped piece of wood in his vice at the other end of the bench. The two puppets he was working on were far advanced now. She took courage and looked straight at him.
“Oh Niall,” she said. “Jennifer has told me....”
His expression changed. He looked neither embarrassed nor angry, but concerned and thoughtful. He came forward, and, taking her by the arm, led her to the end of the room by the fireplace and made her sit in one of the old leather armchairs there. She did not resist, but sat disconsolately looking up at him.
“Why,” he asked, after studying her for some time, “why has that upset you so?”
“I don't know,” said Clare unhappily. It had seemed to her before that in this interview today she must both reproach him and appeal to him. But it was not like that at all.
“I think I can understand,” he said, gently, “and partly guess what's happened. I should have told you before. I don't know why I didn't. A kind of uncertainty, I suppose. It was such a bizarre coincidence. I didn't quite know how to take it, how to put it to you, what to make of it myself. Imagine: not long after I get to know you by your tumbling over our wall in the dark of night another girl from the same place does exactly the same thing. Lord! for a moment when I caught her I thought it was you. I believe I let your name slip out before I realised the mistake. But then I find that this child has not come over by accident. In fact, by a little questioning I got out of her that she knew you had been over the wall once since Christmas. The night the snow lay on the ground. She was curious to know what you had been up to. I was puzzled. Frankly, I didn't know what to do. I even suspected at one time that you might have told her something about your meeting me in the wood. What was I to do? The kid's adventurous. All my instincts are against damping that spirit. I wouldn't forbid her the wood. Upon my soul, I'd encourage all Spoil−the−Child's little wretches to escape and make free of our grounds if they have the enterprise.”
He spoke so frankly, with such an apparently open confession of his mistake, that Clare felt tempted to accept all that he said and think no further into the matter. It would be so easy not to bother any more, just to believe what he said and be taken in his arms. But something nagged at her: he was not telling all the truth; and then, this affair was not just a matter of words in this studio, of an explanation between him and her. He was trying to make her believe that, but there was another person concerned and there were actions, too, that belied these words. She sat straight up and though it wrung her heart to speak so to him, she said:
“Don't lie, Niall. She's told me more than you know. Oh, it doesn't matter to me how she began to come here. You mustn't fall into this vein of explaining—excusing yourself to me for inviting another girl to your house. It's wrong. It puts me in the wrong. And it hurts me. You could have told me that she was coming here at nights, but I've no right to ask to be told; I don't ask....”
He had drawn a little away while she was speaking, and stood now leaning against the other side of the chimney−arch, looking down.
“I'm not insulting you,” he said slowly, “by assuming that you have feelings about this that have to be met with lies. In fact I've told you none. That is how I met Jennifer, a few nights after I had shown you the puppets here. Chance—or at least, something quite independent of my intentions—brought her here; I dealt with the chance in my own way. Believe me, I'm bitterly sorry that it's a way that's hurt you.”
“Oh Niall!” she exclaimed, and the tears started into her eyes. “I'm not, I'm not hurt in that way. I only meant I couldn't bear you to think I was in some way making you say something you should be too proud and independent to say.”
A smile did then pass quickly over his features, but there was something bitter in its brightness. “And yet you are troubled,” he said.
She clasped her hands. “Yes. Yes, I am. But it's fear, Niall. I'm afraid. Ah, don't you see that I don't care about myself. I love you, Niall. Nothing can alter that. It's gone too deep. Whatever you do or say, wherever you go, what's happened can't be altered. What has been is, for ever. It's what's to come that may still be changed. Don't play with Jennifer, Niall. Do what you like with me. But she's such a child. She doesn't understand. Ah, and think of the risks; she might be found out again, coming here, and I shouldn't be able to cover it up another time. But it's not that only. Don't you see, she believes in it all. She may talk like a grown−up, but she's really a child. You can make her believe anything—you, because she's infatuated with you. But it's heartless. You must tell her—tell her as gently as you can, but tell her, that it's all a game. You mustn't let her believe in it.”