She said suddenly: 

“Those two are just waiting—­something will happen!”

“It is probable,” was his grave answer.

She looked at him then—­it pleased her to see him quiver as if that glance had gone right into him; and she said softly: 

“And I think they will be quite right.”

She knew those were reckless words, nor cared very much what they meant; but she knew the revolt in them would move him.  She saw from his face that it had; and after a little pause, said: 

“Happiness is the great thing,” and with soft, wicked slowness:  “Isn’t it, Mr. Courtier?”

But all the cheeriness had gone out of his face, which had grown almost pale.  He lifted his hand, and let it drop.  Then she felt sorry.  It was just as if he had asked her to spare him.

“As to that,” he said:  “The rough, unfortunately, has to be taken with the smooth.  But life’s frightfully jolly sometimes.”

“As now?”

He looked at her with firm gravity, and answered

“As now.”

A sense of utter mortification seized on Barbara.  He was too strong for her—­he was quixotic—­he was hateful!  And, determined not to show a sign, to be at least as strong as he, she said calmly: 

“Now I think I’ll have that cab!”

When she was in the cab, and he was standing with his hat lifted, she looked at him in the way that women can, so that he did not realize that she had looked.

CHAPTER XIII

When Miltoun came to thank her, Audrey Noel was waiting in the middle of the room, dressed in white, her lips smiling, her dark eyes smiling, still as a flower on a windless day.

In that first look passing between them, they forgot everything but happiness.  Swallows, on the first day of summer, in their discovery of the bland air, can neither remember that cold winds blow, nor imagine the death of sunlight on their feathers, and, flitting hour after hour over the golden fields, seem no longer birds, but just the breathing of a new season—­swallows were no more forgetful of misfortune than were those two.  His gaze was as still as her very self; her look at him had in at the quietude of all emotion.

When they’ sat down to talk it was as if they had gone back to those days at Monkland, when he had come to her so often to discuss everything in heaven and earth.  And yet, over that tranquil eager drinking—­in of each other’s presence, hovered a sort of awe.  It was the mood of morning before the sun has soared.  The dew-grey cobwebs enwrapped the flowers of their hearts—­yet every prisoned flower could be seen.  And he and she seemed looking through that web at the colour and the deep-down forms enshrouded so jealously; each feared too much to unveil the other’s heart.  They were like lovers who, rambling in a shy wood, never dare stay their babbling talk of the trees and birds and lost bluebells, lest in the deep waters of a kiss their star of all that is to come should fall and be drowned.  To each hour its familiar—­and the spirit of that hour was the spirit of the white flowers in the bowl on the window-sill above her head.