Their next meeting had prolonged and deepened the
impression. They had found each other again, a few days
later, in an old country house full of books and pictures,
in the soft landscape of southern England. The presence of a
large party, with all its aimless and agitated
displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give
them (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of
communion, and their days there had been like some musical
prelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to hold
back the waves of sound that press against them.
Mrs. Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before;
but she contrived to make him understand that what was so
inevitably coming was not to come too soon. It was not that
she showed any hesitation as to the issue, but rather that
she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in the gradual
reflowering of their intimacy.
Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it.
He remembered that once, in America, when she was a girl,
and he had gone to stay with her family in the country, she
had been out when he arrived, and her mother had told him to
look for her in the garden. She was not in the garden, but
beyond it he had seen her approaching down a long shady
path. Without hastening her step she had smiled and signed
to him to wait; and charmed by the lights and shadows that
played upon her as she moved, and by the pleasure of
watching her slow advance toward him, he had obeyed her and
stood still.
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