Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/152

144 I think I must have been out here a long while, for I am growing cold. Time to go in. I am just emerging, when, down the corridor, click clack! click clack! come the tap of high-heeled shoes, and I hastily draw back into my corner as the new-comer steps over the threshold and stands, face and form and robe, bathed in a flood of pure silvery light. It is Miss Fleming, and she stands quite motionless, looking up steadfastly at the sky overhead. All the soft beauty of her face is gone; in its place there reigns a cold, still determination that contrasts almost violently with the youth of her lineaments. As she slowly lifts her arm and right hand to heaven, her lips move, and she looks like some relentless goddess, who has been turned to stone in the act of calling down confusion and curses upon her enemy. More footsteps—a man's this time—come down the passage and approach the door, pause for a moment, then come on again.

"Had you not better have a shawl, Miss Fleming?" inquires Mr. Vasher's voice. "You will take cold."

At his polite, chill words she neither speaks nor stirs, neither turns nor looks; she stands motionless, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, looking with her straight brow and antique raiment like a Greek slave standing before her master. He looks at her with a keen, hard scrutiny from head to foot, and turns to go. He is within the house, when she calls to him—

"Paul!"

"Do you want me?" he says, pausing; but she does not answer, and he comes back slowly and stands a little apart from her. "Is there anything more to be said between us?" he asks. "Is it not all finished—done with?"

"To you, perhaps," she says; "but not to me—not while my life lasts!"

"You will forget," he says, looking down with a dark and bitter frown; "you are young yet."