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Soon she was torn by two emotions: hatred of the Devitts and awakened interest in Windebank; she did not know which influenced her the more.
She all but made up her mind to write some sort of a reply to Windebank, when she met Harold pulling himself along the road towards the sea.
He had changed in the fortnight that had elapsed since she had last seen him; his face had lost flesh; he looked worn and anxious.
When he saw her, he pulled up. She gave him a formal bow, and was about to pa.s.s him, when the hurt expression on the invalid's face caused her to stop irresolutely by his side.
"At last!" he said.
Mavis looked at him inquiringly.
"I could bear it no longer," he went on.
"Bear what?"
He did not reply; indeed, he did not appear to listen to her words, but said:
"I feared you'd gone for good."
"I've seen nothing of you either."
"Then you missed me? Tell me that you did."
"I don't know."
"I have missed YOU."
"Indeed!"
"I daren't say how much. Where are you going now?"
"Nowhere."
"May I come too?" he asked pleadingly. "I'll go a little way," she remarked.
"Meet me by the sea in ten minutes."
"Why not go there together?"
"I'd far rather meet you."
"Don't you like being seen with me?"
"Yes and no. Yes, because I am very proud at being seen with you."
"And 'no'?"
"It's why I wanted you to meet me by the sea."
"Why?"
"Can't you guess?"
"If I could I wouldn't ask."
"I'll tell you. When you walk with me, I'm afraid you notice my infirmity the more."
"I'll only go on one condition," declared Mavis.
"That---?"
"That we go straight there from here."
"I'm helpless where you're concerned," he sighed, as he started his tricycle.
They went to the road bordering the sea, which just now they had to themselves. On the way they said little; each was occupied with their thoughts.
Mavis was touched by Harold's devotion; also, by his anxiety not to obtrude his infirmity upon her notice. She looked at him, to see in his eyes unfathomable depths of sadness. She repressed an inclination to shed tears. She had never been so near foregoing her resolve to make him the instrument of her hatred of his family. But the forces that decide these matters had other views. Mavis was staring out to sea, in order to hide her emotion from Harold's distress, when the sight of the haze where sea and sky met arrested her attention. Something in her memory struggled for expression, to be a.s.sisted by the smell of seaweed which a.s.sailed her nostrils.
In the twinkling of an eye, Mavis, in imagination, was at Llansallas Bay, with pa.s.sionate love and boundless trust in her heart for the lover at her side, to whom she had surrendered so much. The merest recollection of how her love had been betrayed was enough to dissipate the consideration that she was beginning to feel for Harold. Her heart turned to stone; determination possessed her.
"Still silent!" she exclaimed.
"I have to be."
"Who said so?"
"The little sense that's left me."
"Sense is often nonsense."
"It's a bitter truth to me."
"Particularly now?"
"Now and always."
"May I know?"
"Why did you come into my life?" he asked, as if he had not heard her request.
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Why have you? Why have you?"
"You're not the only one who can ask that question," she murmured.
He looked at her for some moments in amazement before saying:
"Say that again."
