He rose at once, holding out his hands to aid her in that pleasantly impersonal manner so suited to him; and now they stood together in the purple dusk of the uplands--two people young enough to take one another seriously.
"Let me tell you something," she said, facing him, white hands loosely linked behind her. "I don't exactly understand how it has happened, but you know as well as I do that we have formed a--an acquaintance--the sort that under normal conditions requires a long time and several conventional and preliminary chapters. … I should like to know what you think of our performance."
"I think," he said laughing, "that it is charming."
"Oh, yes; men usually find the unconventional agreeable. What I want to know is why I find it so, too?"
"Do you?" A dull colour stained his cheek-bones.
"Certainly I do. Is it because I've had a delightful chance to admonish a sinner--and be--just a little sorry--that he had made such a silly spectacle of himself?"
He laughed, wincing a trifle.
"Hence this agreeably righteous glow suffusing me," she concluded. "So now that I have answered my own question, I think that we had better go. … Don't you?"
They walked for a while, subdued, soberly picking their path through the dusk. After a few moments she began to feel doubtful, a little uneasy, partly from a reaction which was natural, partly because she was not at all sure what either Quarrier or Major Belwether would think of the terms she was already on with Siward. Suppose they objected? She had never thwarted either of these gentlemen. Besides she already had a temporary interest in Siward--the interest that women always cherish, quite unconsciously, for the man whose shortcomings they have consented to overlook.
As they crossed the headland, through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of Shotover House were brilliantly illuminated.
"Our shooting-party has returned," she said.
They crossed the drive through the white glare of the motor lamps; people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds or khaki.
As they entered the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she left him standing at the open door of the gun-room.