The Guest of Quesnay by Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946

There was a final call, clear and loud as a bugle, and she turned to the direction whence it came, so that her back was toward me. Then Oliver Saffren came running lightly round the turn of the path, near her and facing her.

He stopped as short as she had.

Her hand dropped from the slender branch, and pressed against her side.

He lifted his hat and spoke to her, and I thought she made some quick reply in a low voice, though I could not be sure.

She held that startled attitude a moment longer, then turned and crossed the glade so hurriedly that it was almost as if she ran away from him. I had moved aside with my easel and camp-stool, but she passed close to me as she entered the path again on my side of the glade. She did not seem to see me, her dark eyes stared widely straight ahead, her lips were parted, and she looked white and frightened.

She disappeared very quickly in the windings of the path.

CHAPTER IX

He came on more slowly, his eyes following her as she vanished, then turning to me with a rather pitiful apprehension--a look like that I remember to have seen (some hundreds of years ago) on the face of a freshman, glancing up from his book to find his doorway ominously filling with sophomores.

I stepped out to meet him, indignant upon several counts, most of all upon his own. I knew there was no offence in his heart, not the remotest rude intent, but the fact was before me that he had frightened a woman, had given this very lovely guest of my friends good cause to hold him a boor, if she did not, indeed, think him (as she probably thought me) an outright lunatic! I said:

"You spoke to that lady!" And my voice sounded unexpectedly harsh and sharp to my own ears, for I had meant to speak quietly.

"I know--I know. It--it was wrong," he stammered. "I knew I shouldn't-- and I couldn't help it."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"It's the truth; I couldn't!"

I laughed sceptically; and he flinched, but repeated that what he had said was only the truth. "I don't understand; it was all beyond me," he added huskily.

"What was it you said to her?"

"I spoke her name--'Madame d'Armand.'"

"You said more than that!"

"I asked her if she would let me see her again."

"What else?"

"Nothing," he answered humbly. "And then she--then for a moment it seemed--for a moment she didn't seem to be able to speak--"

"I should think not!" I shouted, and burst out at him with satirical laughter. He stood patiently enduring it, his lowered eyes following the aimless movements of his hands, which were twisting and untwisting his flexible straw hat; and it might have struck me as nearer akin to tragedy rather than to a thing for laughter: this spectacle of a grown man so like a schoolboy before the master, shamefaced over a stammered confession.

"But she did say something to you, didn't she?" I asked finally, with the gentleness of a cross-examining lawyer.

"Yes--after that moment."

"Well, what was it?"

"She said, 'Not now!' That was all."

"I suppose that was all she had breath for! It was just the inconsequent and meaningless thing a frightened woman WOULD say!"

"Meaningless?" he repeated, and looked up wonderingly.