“I don’t know,” said Anna-Felicitas again, still not moving.

“Anna-Felicitas, my dear,” he said, “won’t you go?”

“No, John,” said Anna-Felicitas gently.

His eyes twinkled and danced more than ever.  He took a step towards her, then checked himself and looked round beseechingly at Mr. Twist.

“Somebody’s got to go,” he said.

“Yes,” said Mr. Twist.  “And I guess it’s me.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

He went straight in search of Anna-Rose.

He was going to propose to her.  He couldn’t bear it.  He couldn’t bear the idea of his previous twins, his blessed little Twinklers, both going out of his life at the same time, and he couldn’t bear, after what he had just seen in the office, the loneliness of being left outside love.

All his life he had stood on the door-mat outside the shut door of love.  He had had no love; neither at home, where they talked so much about it and there wasn’t any, nor, because of his home and its inhibitions got so thoroughly into his blood, anywhere else.  He had never tried to marry,—­again because of his home and his mother and the whole only-son-of-a-widow business.  He would try now.  He would risk it.  It was awful to risk it, but it was more awful not to.  He adored Anna-Rose.  How nearly the afternoon before, when she sat crying in his chair, had he taken her in his arms!  Why, he would have taken her into them then and there, while she was in that state, while she was in the need of comfort, and never let her go out of them again, if it hadn’t been that he had got the idea so firmly fixed in his head that she was a child.  Fool that he was.  Elliott had dispelled that idea for him.  It wasn’t children who looked as Anna-Felicitas had looked just now in the office.  Anna-Rose, it is true, seemed younger than Anna-Felicitas, but that was because she was little and easily cried.  He loved her for being little.  He loved her because she easily cried.  He yearned and hungered to comfort, to pet to take care of.  He was, as has been pointed out, a born mother.

Avoiding the verandah and Mrs. Bilton, Mr. Twist filled with recklessness, hurried upstairs and knocked at Anna-Rose’s door.  No answer.  He listened.  Dead silence.  He opened it a slit and peeped in.  Emptiness.  Down he went again and made for the kitchen, because Li Koo, who always knew everything, might know where she was.  Li Koo did.  He jerked his head towards the window, and Mr. Twist hurried to it and looked out.  There in the middle of the yard was the cat, exactly where he had left her an hour before, and kneeling beside her stroking her stomach was Anna-Rose.

She had her back to the house and her face was hidden.  The sun streamed down on her bare head and on the pale gold rings of hair that frisked round her neck.  She didn’t hear him till he was close to her, so much absorbed was she apparently in the cat; and when she did she didn’t look up, but bent her head lower than before and stroked more assiduously.