Say no more. This is too much fuss. Perhaps we
have both changed.'
'It was you who began it.'
'Was it? How can one tell?'
'You began it,' he persisted. 'There was a time when you went white,
like paper, when we met, and your eyes went black. Now I might be a
sheep in a field.'
She was standing up, ready to go. 'One gets used to things,' she said.
'I have never been used to you,' he muttered, and she knew that,
telling this truth, he also explained a good deal. 'I never should be.
You're like nobody else--nobody.'
'But it is too much strain,' she murmured slowly.
'Yes--well, it is you who have said it. I had made up my mind--I'm not
ungrateful--I never intended to say a word.'
She smiled. This was the first remark which had really touched her.
She found it so offensive that a smile was the only weapon with which
to meet it. 'I know that.'
'But mind,' he almost shouted, 'there's nobody like you.'
'Yes, yes, I know that too.' She turned to him with a silencing
sternness. 'I tell you I know everything.'
2
The old groom who held her horse nodded with satisfaction when he
helped her into the saddle. She had not lost her spring and he
tightened her girths in a leisurely manner and arranged her skirt with
the care due to a fine rider and a lady who understood a horse, yet
one who was always ready to ask an old man's advice. He had a great
admiration for Miss Mallett and, conscious of it and rather
pathetically glad of it, she lingered for the pleasure of talking to
some one who seemed simple and untroubled.
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