She saw from his face
that it had; and after a little pause, said:
"Happiness is the great thing," and with soft, wicked slowness: "Isn't
it, Mr. Courtier?"
But all the cheeriness had gone out of his face, which had grown almost
pale. He lifted his hand, and let it drop. Then she felt sorry. It was
just as if he had asked her to spare him.
"As to that," he said: "The rough, unfortunately, has to be taken with
the smooth. But life's frightfully jolly sometimes."
"As now?"
He looked at her with firm gravity, and answered
"As now."
A sense of utter mortification seized on Barbara. He was too strong
for her--he was quixotic--he was hateful! And, determined not to show a
sign, to be at least as strong as he, she said calmly:
"Now I think I'll have that cab!"
When she was in the cab, and he was standing with his hat lifted, she
looked at him in the way that women can, so that he did not realize that
she had looked.
CHAPTER XIII
When Miltoun came to thank her, Audrey Noel was waiting in the middle
of the room, dressed in white, her lips smiling, her dark eyes smiling,
still as a flower on a windless day.
In that first look passing between them, they forgot everything but
happiness. Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery of
the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor imagine
the death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour after hour
over the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the breathing of
a new season--swallows were no more forgetful of misfortune than were
those two.
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