Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/35

Rh intently how much "all" might in such a case practically amount to. But "Here he comes" was what she presently replied.

Paul Beever was in sight, so freshly dressed that even at a distance his estimate of the requirements of the occasion was visible from his necktie to his boots. Adorned as it unmistakably had never been, his great featureless person moved solemnly over the lawn.

"Take him then—take him!" said Tony Bream.

Jean, intensely serious but with agitation held at bay, gave him one more look, a look so infinitely pacific that as, at Paul's nearer approach, he turned away from her, he had the sense of going off with a sign of her acceptance of his solution. The light in her face was the light of the compassion that had come out to him, and what was that compassion but the gage of a relief, of a promise? It made him walk down to the river with a step quickened to exhilaration; all the more that as the girl's eyes followed him he couldn't see in them the tragic intelligence he had kindled, her perception—from the very rhythm of the easy gait she had watched so often—that he really thought such a virtual