And just beyond a bed of
geraniums that had hidden his view she was seated on a chair, and
stopping with a jerk absolutely in front of her, he said, quite
angrily:
"Oh! there you are!"
Which was not a bit the speech with which he had intended to
introduce himself, but served his purpose just as well--perhaps
better.
She did not resent his words or the tone.
"It was the children," she explained. "They wanted to play; so I
thought I would come on a little farther."
Upon which, as a matter of course, he took the chair beside her, and
it did not occur to either of them that they had not known one
another since the beginning, when between St. John's Wood and Albany
Street God planted a garden.
Each evening they would linger there, listening to the pleading
passion of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope.
He loved her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances
of invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some
neighbouring table in the cheap luncheon room he had always shrunk
confused and awkward. Her shyness gave him confidence. It was she
who was half afraid, whose eyes would fall beneath his gaze, who
would tremble at his touch, giving him the delights of manly
dominion, of tender authority. It was he who insisted on the
aristocratic seclusion afforded by the private chair; who, with the
careless indifference of a man to whom pennies were unimportant,
would pay for them both.
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