He had not been allowed to see her. She had been at Orchid Lodge for three days. No one was aware of his special reason for wanting to see her. Not even to his mother had he let fall a hint that Desire was the girl for whose sake he had stayed in America. His thoughtfulness in making inquiries and in sending flowers was attributed to his remembrance of their childhood’s friendship.

“Her bedroom’s a bower already,” Hal told him; “you really mustn’t send her any more just yet.”

“Does she ask about me?” He awaited the answer breathlessly.

“Sometimes. I was telling her only this morning how you’d spent the autumn in New York.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She was interested.”

He could imagine the mischief that had crept into her gray eyes as she had listened to whatever Hal had told her. Why didn’t she send for him?

As far as he could learn, she wasn’t hurt—only shaken. He suspected that Mrs. Sheerug was making her an excuse for a bout of nursing. The house went on tiptoe. The door of the spare-room opened and closed softly.

He had to see her. It was on the golden evening of the fourth day that he waylaid Hal on the stairs. “Would you please give her this note? I’ll wait. There’ll be an answer. I’m sure of it.”

Hal eyed him curiously. Up till now he had been too excited to notice emotion in any one else. For the first time he seemed to become aware of the eagerness with which Teddy mentioned her. He took the note without a word.

For several minutes Teddy waited. They seemed more like hours. From the Park across the river came the ping of tennis and the laughter of girls. A door opened. Mrs. Sheerug’s trotting footsteps were approaching. As she came in sight, she lowered her head and blinked at him above the rims of her spectacles.

“My grand-daughter says she wants to thank you for the flowers. She insists on thanking you herself. I don’t know whether it’s right. She’s in—— She’s an invalid, you know.”

Leaving her to decide this point of etiquette, he hurried along the passage and tapped. He heard her voice and thrilled to the sound. “Now don’t any of you disturb us till I call for you.—Promise?”

As Hal slipped out, he left the door open and nodded. “She’ll see you.”

Pushing aside the tapestry curtain of Absalom, he entered. A breeze was ruffling the curtains. Against the wall outside ivy whispered. The evening glow, pouring across tree-tops, gilded the faded gold of the harp and filled the room with an amber vagueness.

She was sitting up in bed, propped on pillows, with a blue shawl wrapped about her shoulders. She looked such a tiny Desire—such a girl. Her bronze-black hair was braided in a plait and fell in a long coil across the bedclothes. Their eyes met. He halted.

Slowly her face broke into a smile. “I wonder which of us has been the worse.”

He knelt at her side, pressing her hand.

“Which is it, Meester Deek? D’you remember their names? It’s Miss Independence. I wouldn’t kiss it if I were you; it’s an unkind, a scratchy little hand.”

He raised his eyes. “Are you very much hurt?”

She gazed down at him mockingly. “By the accident or by your letter?—By the accident, no. By your letter, yes. I do feel things deeply—I was feeling them more than ordinarily deeply just then. I didn’t like you when you wrote that.”

“But I wrote you so often. I told you how sorry I was. You never answered.”

She crouched her chin against her shoulder. “Shall I tell you the absolute truth? It’s silly of me to give away my secrets; a girl ought always to be a mystery.” Her finger went up to her mouth and her eyes twinkled. “It was because I knew that I was coming to England. I wanted to see how patient you—— You understand?”

He jumped to his feet. “Then you hadn’t chucked me? All the time you were intending to come to me?”

She winked at him. “Perhaps, and perhaps not. It would have depended on my temper and how full I was with other engagements.—No, you’re not to kiss me when I’m in bed; it isn’t done in the best families.”

He drew back from her, laughing. “How good it is to be mocked! And how d’you like your family?” He seated himself on the edge of the bed.

“Not there,” she reproved him; “that isn’t done either. Bring a chair.”

When he had obeyed, she lay back with her face towards him and let him take her hand.

“Meester Deek, it’s very sweet to have a father.”

When he nodded, she shook her head. “You needn’t look so wise. You don’t know anything about it; you’ve had a father always. But to find a father when you’re grown up—that’s what’s so sweet and wonderful.” She fell silent. Then she said, “It’s like having a lover you don’t need to be afraid of. We know nothing unhappy about each other; he’s never had to whip me or be cross with me, the way he would have done if I’d always been his little girl.—You do look funny, Meester Deek; I believe you’re envying me and—and almost crying.”

“It was in this room,” he said, “that I first met your mother. I heard her singing when I was lying in this very bed. She looked like you, Princess; and in fun she asked me to marry her.”

Desire laughed softly. “I haven’t—not even in fun.” Then quickly, to prevent what he was on the point of saying, “I would have liked to have known you, Meester Deek, when you were quite, quite little. You’d never guess what I and my father talk about.”

He had to try. At each fresh suggestion she shook her head.

“About my beautiful mother. Isn’t it wonderful of him to have remembered and remembered? I believe if I wanted, I could help them to marry. Only,” she looked away from him, “that would spoil the romance.”

“It wouldn’t spoil it Why do you always speak as if——”

She pursed her lips. “It would. Marriage may be very nice, but it doesn’t do to let people know you too well. And then, there’s another reason: Mrs. Sheerug’s a dear, but she doesn’t like my mother.”

“Doesn’t she?” He did his best to make his voice express surprise.

“You know she doesn’t. And she has her doubts about me, too. I can tell that by the way she says, ’My dear, you laugh like your mother,’ as if to laugh like my mother was a crime. She thinks it’s wrong to be gay. I think in her heart she hates my mother.”

Suddenly she sat up. “All from you, and I haven’t thanked you yet!”

He looked round the room; the amber had faded to the silver of twilight. In vases and bowls the flowers he had sent her glimmered like memories and threw out fragrance.

Her fingers nestled closer in his hand. “I’m not good at thanking, but—— Ever since I met you, all along the way there’s been nothing but kindness. What have I given you in return?—Don’t tell me, because it won’t be true.—You can kiss my cheek just once, Meester Deek, if you do it quietly.”

She bent towards him. In that room, where so many things had happened, with the perfumed English dusk steal ing in at the window, she seemed to have become for the first time a part of his real world.

“Shall we tell them, Princess?”

“Tell them?”

“About New York?”

She laid her finger on his lips. “No. It’s the same with me now as it was with you in New York. You never mentioned me in your letters to your mother. Besides, don’t you think it’ll be more exciting if only you and I know it?” Her voice sank. “I’m changed somehow. Perhaps it’s having a father. I want to be good and little. And—and he wouldn’t be proud of me if he knew——”

The door opened. Desire withdrew her hand swiftly. Mrs. Sheerug entered.

“Why, it’s nearly dark!” She struck a match and lit the gas. “I waited for you to call me, and since you didn’t——”

Teddy rose. “I’ve stayed rather long.”

He shook Desire’s hand conventionally. At the door, as he lifted the tapestry to pass out, he glanced back. Mrs. Sheerug was closing the window. Desire kissed the tips of her fingers to him.

It seemed that at last all his dreams were coming true. During the week that followed he spent many hours in the spare-room. She was soon convalescent. Her trunks had been sent from Fluffy’s house and all her pretty, decorative clothes unpacked. Mrs. Sheerug thought them vain and actressy, but the spell of Desire was over her.

“She thinks I’ll come to a bad end,” Desire said. “Perhaps I shall.”

Usually he found her sitting by the window in a filmy peignoir and boudoir-cap. Very often her father was beside her. Hal’s relations with her were peculiarly tender. He was more like a lover than a father. He had changed entirely; there was a brightness in his eyes and an alertness in his step. He ............