"
"Here's an old one."
Mrs. Benton took the photograph.
"Oh!" she said; "you can see who it is." And holding it perhaps too
tightly, for her fingers trembled, she added:
"A note, please, sir; and the messenger boy is waiting for--an answer."
While he read the note she noticed with concern how packing had brought
the blood into his head....
When, in response to that note, Courtier entered the well-known
confectioner's called Gustard's, it was still not quite tea-time, and
there seemed to him at first no one in the room save three middle-aged
women packing sweets; then in the corner he saw Barbara. The blood was
no longer in his head; he was pale, walking down that mahogany-coloured
room impregnated with the scent of wedding-cake. Barbara, too, was pale.
So close to her that he could count her every eyelash, and inhale the
scent of her hair and clothes to listen to her story of Miltoun, so
hesitatingly, so wistfully told, seemed very like being kept waiting
with the rope already round his neck, to hear about another person's
toothache. He felt this to have been unnecessary on the part of Fate!
And there came to him perversely the memory of that ride over the
sun-warmed heather, when he had paraphrased the old Sicilian song: 'Here
will I sit and sing.' He was a long way from singing now; nor was there
love in his arms.
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