He
perceived suddenly that he had a carrot in his mouth.
Harbinger had witnessed this episode, oddly pale, leaning against the
loose-box wall. He spoke, as it came to an end:
"Lady Babs!"
The tone of his voice must have been as strange as it sounded to
himself, for Barbara spun round.
"Yes?"
"How long am I going on like this?"
Neither changing colour nor dropping her eyes, she regarded him with a
faintly inquisitive interest. It was not a cruel look, had not a trace
of mischief, or sex malice, and yet it frightened him by its serene
inscrutability. Impossible to tell what was going on behind it. He took
her hand, bent over it, and said in a low voice:
"You know what I feel; don't be cruel to me!"
She did not pull away her hand; it was as if she had not thought of it.
"I am not a bit cruel."
Looking up, he saw her smiling.
"Then--Babs!"
His face was close to hers, but Barbara did not shrink back. She just
shook her head; and Harbinger flushed up.
"Why?" he asked; and as though the enormous injustice of that rejecting
gesture had suddenly struck him, he dropped her hand.
"Why?" he said again, sharply.
But the silence was only broken by the cheeping of sparrows outside the
round window, and the sound of the horse, Hal, munching the last morsel
of his carrot. Harbinger was aware in his every nerve of the sweetish,
slightly acrid, husky odour of the loosebox, mingling with the scent of
Barbara's hair and clothes.
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