CHAPTER XLV

Owen and I dined at Derryaghy that night, but all through dinner I sat very quiet. No allusion was made by the others to my having left them, which showed, I thought, that they had discussed it among themselves and had agreed not to take any notice.

After dinner Gerald stayed behind to smoke a cigarette, and I stayed with him. When we followed the others to the drawing-room, he went to the piano and began to play. Owen sat by the window looking out. He had not once spoken to me since I had left him and Katherine at the top of Slieve Donard; I thought he had even avoided meeting my glance, but I was not sure. Katherine and Miss Dick had each some needlework. Mrs. Carroll was not with us. From my corner of the room I watched Katherine as she worked, her beautiful head bowed in the lamp-light, and secretly, in my soul, I knew Owen was more fitted to be her mate than I. It is true, I did not believe he could love her so intensely, but the love he gave her would be more unselfish. I became lost in gloomy thoughts. I knew they both belonged to a world where I was a stranger, an outcast. In that hour I recognized my moral inferiority to Owen, and suddenly I felt how peaceful and quiet it would be in the thick darkness, with the grass over my head, and everything finished and forgotten.

Gerald had begun to play the “Moonlight Sonata,” Chopinizing it, as he did everything, and perhaps this unhappy vision came to me from his music. At all events, it hovered before me in an intensity of sadness beneath which I shut my eyes. I got up by-and-by and crossed the room to where Katherine sat at her work. I pulled forward a chair and sat down near to her, and with my back to the others, so that what I said should be heard by her alone.

“Will you come out with me?” I asked, in a low voice.

“Out? _Now_, do you mean?” She looked up in surprise, but she also spoke in lowered tones, and with, I thought, a certain coldness. At this my anger was stirred afresh.

“Now,” I answered.

She seemed on the point of refusing. “Are you afraid?” I sneered.

She appeared not to understand me. “Afraid! What is there to be afraid of?” After a moment she decided. “I will come in a minute or two; I want to finish this flower.”

She returned perfectly calmly to her work. She was embroidering a table-cloth for her mother’s birthday, and was always saying she should never have it finished in time. I, with a burning heart, got up and strolled out on to the terrace, my hands in my pockets, and whistling below my breath, which I imagined lent an air of off-handedness to my exit. Once beyond the windows, however, my whistling ceased abruptly, and I hurried round to the other side of the house, where I waited in a fever till she should come.

She did not keep me long. She had not put on a hat, nor even a loose wrap about her shoulders; evidently she intended our interview to be a short one. I hastened from the shadow to meet her.

“Do you know what I want?” I began gloomily.

“You want to speak to me about something, I suppose?” Again I was conscious of a coldness in her voice.

“Yes. I have so few opportunities now.”

“I think you have plenty of opportunities, considering you see me every day.”

We walked on slowly, side by side. “Are you angry with me?” I asked, trying to speak penitently.

“About what?”

There was something in her air of calm deliberation that held me at a distance.

“Everything――this afternoon, for instance.”

“I thought you weren’t very nice to your friend.”

“I wasn’t. Nor to you.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter about me.”

“Why?” I asked miserably.

“Well, it doesn’t matter so much. I’m not your guest――and――I don’t suppose I’m as fond of you as he is.”

There was something cruel in those last words, though their cruelty may have been unconscious. For a minute or two I could not speak.

“Why have you changed, Katherine?” I said at length, my voice still not very secure.

“It is you who have changed.”

“Have I?”

“You were not like this last summer.”

“I think I was.”

“I don’t know what it is, but there is a difference. I suppose it may be only that you are growing up. I like people to be either men or boys. Why can’t you be natural? Why can’t you be content to be as you were?”

“I don’t think you have treated me fairly.”

“I can’t help it. Why should you be so jealous? It’s horrid. Everything is changed, as you say. It is not nearly so nice. I first began to notice it in your letters, but I thought when I saw you it would be all right. If I had known you were going to be like this I wouldn’t have come at all.”

There was something in her manner I couldn’t understand, something mysterious, as if her words hid a regret, though whether it was for our old friendship or not I could not say.

“Tell me what it is you don’t like,” I said, thickly.

Katherine’s dark blue eyes rested on me while she hesitated. “I can’t. I’m stupid. Perhaps I don’t really know myself.” Then suddenly she broke out, “Don’t speak to me or I shall cry or do something idiotic. Let us go back.” Without waiting for me she began to walk hastily in the direction of the house. I ran after her; I was lost in wonderment; but I made no attempt to detain her or to question her.