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Then came a knock at the consulting-room door sharp, quick, imperious, oddly unlike Lynette's soft tap.... At the summons Saxham made two strides across the carpet and opened to her, a question on his lips. "Why have you come back so early? Has anything happened?" Even as he asked, her look told why. She knew....
"Which may be a surprise to people who think it must be nothing but jam for those ladies and gentlemen that have made their mark in the Profession." "Yes?" Lynette's golden eyes smile back into the laughing brown ones with pleasant friendliness, combined with an irritating lack of comprehension.
The allegory by which Gareth's four opponents are made to form a sort of stumbling succession representing Morn, Noon, Evening, and Night or Death, is hardly worth the introduction, but it is not insisted upon: the last of these knights, besieging Castle Perilous in a skull helmet, and clamoring for marriage with Lynette's sister Lyonors, turns out to be a large-sized, fresh-faced and foolish boy, who issues from the skull "as a flower new blown," and fatuously explains that his brothers have dressed him out in burlesque and deposited him as a bugbear at the gate.
And then came the orderly crowding to the door, and they were outside under the great violet sky, throbbing with splendid stars, breathing the tainted air that came from the laagers and the trenches. But oh, was there ever a sweeter night, following upon a sweeter day? Beauvayse's hand found and pressed Lynette's. She looked up and saw his eyes shining in the starlight.
There is the washing-bell; the pupils' tea-bell will ring directly; you must hurry, or you will be late. One moment. What of this unpleasant incident that took place during the afternoon walk yesterday? Sister Cleophée and Sister Francis-Clare have not given me a very definite account." Lynette's fair skin flushed poppy-red. "Mother, they hooted us on the road to the Recreation Ground."
At that remembrance Lynette's eyes went lovingly to the copy of the Millais portrait, and as the sun burst through the streaming wind-chased clouds, and smote bright diamond-rays from the dripping window-panes, the firm lips seemed to curve in the rare, sudden smile, the great grey eyes to gleam with life and tenderness.
To his narrow couch in the dressing-room adjoining Lynette's bedroom her husband dared not go. So he wore the night out, doggedly wrestling with the demon that boils the blood of strong fierce men to forgetfulness of compacts and breach of oaths.
Once Lynette's lover knew everything there was to know, the trees and rocks and flowers of the Eden in which every daughter of Eve owns the right to walk, if only once in a whole lifetime, would be marred and broken, scorched and spoiled, like these. Purblind that she had been.
She sat beside you, and looked at you, and touched you, and presently your eyes opened, that was all!... Thinking this, a streak of gold glimmered between Lynette's thick dusky lashes; her lips wore a smile of infinite content. She stole a glance, and there it was, the large, beautiful, lightly clenched hand.
Whatever apprehensions, whatever regrets, whatever fears may have warred within Beauvayse, whatever consciousness may have been his of having taken an irrevocable step, bound to bring disgrace and reproach, sorrow, and repentance upon the innocent as upon the guilty, he showed no sign as he came to meet them, and lifted the Service felt from his golden head, and held out an eager hand for Lynette's.
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