"
"I miss the connection," said Irene, with a puzzled air.
"Forgive me. I am fond of music, and it has been in my mind all the
time--the hope that you would play again."
"Oh, that was merely the slow music, as one might say, of the
drawing-room mysteries--an obligato in the after-dinner harmony. I
play only to amuse myself--or when it is a painful duty."
Piers was warned by his tactful conscience that he had held Miss
Derwent quite long enough in talk. A movement in their neighbourhood
gave miserable opportunity; he resigned his seat to another
expectant, and did his best to converse with someone else.
Her voice went with him as he walked homewards across the Park,
under a fleecy sky silvered with moonlight; the voice which now and
again brought back so vividly their first meeting at Ewell. He lived
through it all again, the tremors, the wild hopes, the black despair
of eight years ago. How she encountered him on the stairs, talked of
his long hours of study, and prophesied--with that indescribable
blending of gravity and jest, still her characteristic--that he
would come to grief over his examination. Irene! Irene! Did she
dream what was in his mind and heart? The long, long love, his very
life through all labours and cares and casualties--did she suspect
it, imagine it? If she had received his foolish verses (he grew hot
to think of them), there must have been at least a moment when she
knew that he worshipped her, and does such knowledge ever fade from
a woman's memory?
Irene! Irene! Was she brought nearer to him by her own experience of
heart-trouble? That she had suffered, he could not doubt; impossible
for her to have given her consent to marriage unless she believed
herself in love with the man who wooed her.
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