Visions came to her awake to reassure her; he and she in a sleigh together under the winter stars – he and she in the sunlight, their skates flashing over the frozen meadows – he and she in the armoury, heads together over some wonder of ancient craftsmanship – he and she at luncheon – in the library – always he and she together in happy companionship. Her eyelids fluttered and drooped; and sleep came, and dreams – wonderful, exquisite, past belief – and still of him and of herself together, always together in a magic world that could not be except for such as they.
CHAPTER VI
When the sombre morning broke at last, Jacqueline awoke, sprang from her bed, and fluttered away about her dressing as blithely as an April linnet in a hurry.
She had just time to breakfast and catch her train, with the help of heaven and a taxicab, and she managed to do it about the same moment that Desboro, half a hundred miles away, glanced out of his dressing-room window and saw the tall trees standing like spectres in the winter fog, and the gravel on the drive shining wet and muddy through melting snow. But he turned to the mirror again, whistling a gay air, and twisted his necktie into a smarter knot. Then he went out to the greenhouses and snipped off enough carnations to make a great sheaf of clove-scented blossoms for Jacqueline's room; and after that he proceeded through the other sections of the fragrant glass galleries, cutting, right and left, whatever he considered beautiful enough to do her fresh, young beauty honour.
At the station, he saw her standing on the platform of the drawing-room car as the train thundered in, veil and raincoat blowing, just as he had seen her there the first time she arrived at Silverwood station.
The car steps were sheathed in ice; she had already ventured down a little way when he reached her and offered aid; and she permitted him to swing her to the cinder-strewn ground.
"Are you really here!" he exclaimed, oblivious of interested glances from trainmen and passengers.
They exchanged an impulsive hand-clasp. Both were unusually animated.
"Are you well?" she asked, as though she had been away for months.
"Yes. Are you? It's perfectly fine of you to come" – still retaining her hand – "I wonder if you know how glad I am to see you! I wonder if you really do!"
She started to say something, hesitated, blushed, then their hands parted, and she answered lightly:
"What a very cordial welcome for a business girl on a horrid day! You mustn't spoil me, Mr. Desboro."
"I was afraid you might not come," he said; and indiscreet impulse prompted her to answer, as she had first answered him there on the platform two weeks ago:
"Do you suppose that mere weather could have kept me away from the famous Desboro collection?"
The charming malice in her voice, the delightful impertinence of her reply, so obviously at variance with fact, enchanted him. She was conscious of its effect on him, and, already slightly excited, ventured to laugh at her own thrust as though challenging his self-conceit to believe that she had even grazed herself with the two-edged weapon.
"Do I count for absolutely nothing?" he said.
"Do you flatter yourself that I returned to see you?"
"Let me believe it for just one second."
"I don't doubt that you will secretly and triumphantly believe it all the time."
"If I dared – "
"Is that sort of courage lacking in you, Mr. Desboro? I have heard otherwise. And how long are we going to remain here on this foggy platform?"
Here was an entirely new footing; but in the delightful glow of youthful indiscretion she still maintained her balance lightly, mockingly.
"Please tell me," she said, as they entered the car, and he drew the big fur robe around her, "just how easily you believe in your own overpowering attractions. Do women encourage you in such modest faith in yourself? Or are you merely created that way?"
"The house has been a howling wilderness without you," he said. "I admit my loneliness, anyway."
"I admit nothing. Besides, I wasn't."
"Is that true?"
She laughed tormentingly, eyes and cheeks brilliant, now undisguisedly on guard – her first acknowledgment that in this man she condescended to divine the hereditary adversary.
"I mean to punish," said her eyes.
"What an attack from a clear sky on a harmless young man," he said, at last.
"No, an attack from the fog on an insufferable egoist – an ambush, Mr. Desboro. And I thought a little sword-play might do your complacent wits a service. Has it?"
"But you begin by a dozen thrusts, then beat down my guard, and cuff me about with blade and pommel – "
"I had to. Now, does your vanity believe that my return to Silverwood was influenced by your piteous appeal over the wire – and your bad temper, too?"
"No," he said solemnly.
"Well, then! I came here partly to put my notes in better shape for Mr. Sissly, partly to clear up odds and ends and leave him a clear field to plow – in your persistent company," she added, with such engaging malice that even the name of Sissly, which he hated, made him laugh.
"You won't do that," he said confidently.
"Do what, Mr. Desboro?"
"Turn me over to anything named Sissly."
"Indeed, I will – you and your celebrated collection! Of course you could go South, but, judging from your devotion to the study of ancient armour – "
"You don't mean it, do you?"
"What? About your devotion?"
"No, about Sissly."
"Yes, I do. Listen to me, Mr. Desboro. I made up my mind that sleighing, and skating, and luncheon and tea, and —you, are not good for a busy girl's business career. I'm going to be very practical and very frank with you. I don't belong here except on business, and you make it so pleasant and unbusinesslike for me that my conscience protests. You see, if the time I now take to lunch with you, tea with you, skate, sleigh, talk, listen, in your very engaging company is properly employed, I can attend to yards and yards of business in town. And I'm going to. I mean it, please," as he began to smile.
His smile died out. He said, quietly:
"Doesn't our friendship count for anything?"
She looked at him; shrugged her shoulders:
"Oh, Mr. Desboro," she said pleasantly, "does it, really?"
The blue eyes were clear and beautiful, and a little grave; only the upcurled corners of her mouth promised anything.
The car drew up at the house; she sprang out and ran upstairs to her room. He heard her in animated confab with Mrs. Quant for a few minutes, then she came down in her black business gown, with narrow edges of lawn at collar and cuffs, and the bright lock already astray on her cheek. A white carnation was tucked into her waist; the severe black of her dress, as always, made her cheeks and lips and golden hair more brilliant by contrast.
"Now," she said, "for my notes. And what are you going to do while I'm busy?"
"Watch you, if I may. You've heard about the proverbial cat?"
"Care killed it, didn't it?"
"Yes; but it had a good look at the Queen first."
A smile touched her eyes and lips – a little wistfully.
"You know, Mr. Desboro, that I like to waste time with you. Flatter your vanity with that confession. And even if things were – different – but they couldn't ever be – and I must work very hard if I'm ever going to have any leisure in my old age. But come to the library for this last day, and smoke as usual. And you may talk to amuse me, if you wish. Don't mind if I'm too busy to answer your folly in kind."
They went together to the library; she placed the mass of notes in front of her and began to sort them – turned for a second and looked around at him with adorable malice, then bent again to the task before her.
"Miss Nevers!"
"Yes?"
"You will come to Silverwood again, won't you?"
She wrote busily with a pencil.
"Won't you?"
She made some marginal notes and he looked at the charming profile in troubled silence.
About ten minutes later she turned leisurely, tucking up the errant strand of hair with her pencil:
"Did you say anything recently, Mr. Desboro?"
"Out of the depths, yes. The voice in the wilderness as usual went unheeded. I wished to explain to you how we might give up our skating and sleighing and everything except the bare necessities – and you could still come to Silverwood on business – "
"What are the 'bare necessities'?"
"Your being here is one – "
"Answer me seriously, please."
"Food, then. We must eat."
She conceded that much.
"We've got to motor to and from the station!"
She admitted that, too.
"Those," he pointed out, "are the bare necessities. We can give up everything else."
She sat looking at him, playing absently with her pencil. After a while, she turned to her desk again, and, bending over it, began to make meaningless marks with her pencil on the yellow pad.
"What is the object," she said, "of trying to make me forget that I wouldn't be here at all except on business?"
"Do you think of that every minute?"
"I – must."
"It isn't necessary."
"It is imperative, Mr. Desboro – and you know it."
She wrote steadily for a while, strapped a bundle of notes with an elastic band, laid it aside, and turned around, resting her arm on the back of the chair. Blue eyes level with his, she inspected him curiously. And, if the tension of excitement still remained, all her high spirits and the indiscreet impulses of a gay self-confidence had vanished. But curiosity remained – the eternal, insatiable curiosity of the young.
How much did this man really mean of what he said to her? What did his liking for her signify other than the natural instinct of an idle young man for any pretty girl? What was he going to do about it? For she seemed to be conscious that, sooner or later, somewhere, sometime, he would do something further about it.
Did he mean to make love to her sometime? Was he doing it now? It resembled the preliminaries; she recognised them – had been aware of them almost from the very first.
Men had made love to her before – men in her own world, men in his world. She had learned something since her father died – not a great deal; perhaps more from hearsay than from experience. But some unpleasant knowledge had been acquired at first hand; two clients of her father's had contributed, and a student, named Harroun, and an amateur of soft paste statuettes, the Rev. Bertie Dawley.
Innocently and wholesomely equipped to encounter evil, cool and clear eyed mistress of herself so far, she had felt, with happy contempt, that her fate was her own to control, and had wondered what the word "temptation" could mean to any woman.
What Cynthia had admitted made her a little wiser, but still incredulous. Cold, hunger, debts, loneliness – these were not enough, as Cynthia herself had said. Nor, after all, was Cynthia's liking for Cairns. Which proved conclusively that woman is the arbiter of her own destiny.
Desboro, one knee crossed over the other, sat looking into the fire, which burned in the same fireplace where he had recently immolated the frivolous souvenirs of the past.
Perhaps some gay ghost of that scented sacrifice took shape for a moment in the curling smoke, for he suddenly frowned and passed his hand over his eyes in boyish impatience.
Something – the turn of his head and shoulders – the shape of them – she did not know what – seemed to set her heart beating loudly, ridiculously, without any apparent reason on earth. Too much surprised to be disturbed, she laid her slim hand on her breast, then against her throat, till her pulses grew calmer.
Resting her chin on her arm, she gazed over her shoulder into the fire. He had laid another log across the flames; she watched the bark catch fire, dully conscious, now, that her ideas were becoming as irresponsible and as reasonless as the sudden stirring of her heart had been.
For she was thinking how odd it would be if, like Cynthia, she too, ever came to care about a man of Desboro's sort. She'd see to it that she didn't; that was all. There were other men. Better still, there were to be no men; for her mind fastidiously refused to consider the only sort with whom she felt secure – her intellectual inferiors whose moral worthiness bored her to extinction.
Musing there, half turned on her chair, she saw Desboro rise, still looking intently into the fire, and stand so, his well-made, graceful figure, in silhouette, edged with the crimson glow.
"What do you see in it, Mr. Desboro?"
He turned instantly and came over to her:
"A bath of flames would be very popular," he said, "if burning didn't hurt. I was just thinking about it – how to invent – "
She quoted: "'But I was thinking of a plan to dye one's whiskers green.'"
He said: "I suppose you think me as futile as that old man 'a-settin' on a gate.'"
"Your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his."
"Why should I pursue things? I don't want 'em."
"You are hopeless. There is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. I will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it."
"It's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure – and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. Then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry.
"Once," she said, "I knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. He was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an African parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. And that's the way he talked, Mr. Desboro!"
He seated himself on the other arm of the sofa:
"Did you adore him?"
"At first. He was a celebrity. He did write some pretty things."
"What woke you up?"
She blushed.
"I thought so," observed Desboro.
"Thought what?"
"That he came out of his trance and made love to you."
"How did you know? Wasn't it dreadful! And he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. He was a very dreadful young man – perfectly horrid in his ideas – and I sent him about his business very quickly; and I remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles – "
Desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too.
"What did he want of you?" he asked.
"I didn't fully understand at the time – " she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "He asked me to go to Italy with him. And he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!"
Desboro's laughter rang through the old library; and Jacqueline was not quite certain whether she liked the way he took the matter or not.
"I know him," said Desboro. "I've seen him about town kissing women's hands, in company with a larger and fatter one. Isn't his name Munger?"
"Yes," she said.
"Certainly. And the fat one's name is Waudle. They were a hot team at fashionable literary stunts – the Back Alley Club, you know."
"No, I don't know."
"Oh, it's just silly; a number of fashionable and wealthy young men and women pin on aprons, now and then, and paint and model lumps of wet clay in several severely bare studios over some unfragrant stables. They proudly call it The Back Alley Club."
"Why do you sneer at it?"
"Because it isn't the real thing. It's a strutting ground for things like Munger and Waudle, and all the rag-tag that is always sniffing and snuffling at the back doors of the fine arts."
"At least," she said, "they sniff."
He said, good-humouredly: "Yes, and I don't even do that. Is that what you mean?"
She considered him: "Haven't you any profession?"
"I'm a farmer."
"Why aren't you busy with it, then?"
"I have been, disastrously. There was a sickening deficit this autumn."
She said, with pretty scorn: "I'll wager I could make your farm pay."
He smiled lazily, and indulgently. After a moment he said:
"So the spouse of the moon wanted you to go to Italy with him?"
She nodded absently: "A girl meets queer men in the world."
"Did you ever meet any others?"
She looked up listlessly: "Yes, several."
"As funny as the poet?"
"If you call him funny."
"I wonder who they were," he mused.
"Did you ever hear of the Reverend Bertie Dawley?"
"No."
"He was one."
"That kind?"
"Oh, yes. He collects soft paste figurines; he was a client of father's; but I found very soon that I couldn't go near him. He has a wife and children, too, and he keeps sending his wife to call on me. You know he's a good-looking young man, too, and I liked him; but I never dreamed – "
"Sure," he said, disgusted at his own sex – with the exception of himself.
"That seems to be the way of it," she said thoughtfully. "You can't be friends with men; they all annoy you sooner or later in one way or another!"
"Annoy you? Do you mean make love to you?"
"Yes."
"I don't; do I?"
She bent her head and sat playing with the petals of the white carnation drooping on her breast.
"No," she said calmly. "You don't annoy me."
"Would it seriously annoy you if I did make love to you some day?" he asked, lightly.
Instinct was whispering hurriedly to her: "Here it is at last. Do something about it, and do it quick!" She waited until her heart beat more regularly, then:
"You couldn't annoy – make love – to a girl you really don't care for. That is very simple, isn't it?"
"Suppose I did care for you."
She looked up at him with troubled eyes, then lowered them to the blossom from which her fingers were detaching petal after petal.
"If you did really care, you wouldn't tell me, Mr. Desboro."
"Why not?"
"Because it would not be fair to me." A flush of anger – or she thought it was, brightened her cheeks. "This is nonsense," she said abruptly. "And I'll tell you another thing; I can't come here again. You know I can't. We talk foolishness – don't you know it? And there's another reason, anyway."
"What reason?"
"The real reason," she said, clenching both hands. "You know what it is and so do I – and – and I'm tired of pretending that the truth isn't true."
"What is the truth?"
She had turned her back on him and was staring out of the windows into the mist.
"The truth is," she answered deliberately, "that you and I can not be friends."
"Why?"
"Because we can't be! Because – men are always men. There isn't any way for men and women to be friends. Forgive me for saying it. But it is quite true. A business woman in your employment – can't forget that a real friendship with you is impossible. That is why, from the very beginning, I wanted it to be purely a matter of business between us. I didn't really wish to skate with you, or do anything of that kind with you. I'd rather not lunch with you; I – I had rather you drew the line – and let me draw it clearly, cleanly, and without mistake – as I draw it between myself and my employees. If you wish, I can continue to come here on that basis until my work is finished. Otherwise, I shall not come again."
Her back was still toward him.
"Very well," he said, bluntly.
She heard him rise and walk toward the door; sat listening without turning her head, already regretting what she had said. And now she became conscious that her honesty with herself and with him had been a mistake, entailing humiliation for her – the humiliation of letting him understand that she couldn't afford to care for him, and that she did already. She had thought of him first, and of herself last – had conceded a hopeless situation in order that her decision might not hurt his vanity.
It had been a bad mistake. And now he might be thinking that she had tried to force him into an attitude toward herself which she could not expect, or – God knew what he might be thinking.
Dismayed and uncertain, she stood up nervously as he reëntered the room and came toward her, holding out his hand.
"I'm going to town," he said pleasantly. "I won't bother you any more. Remain; come and go as you like without further fear of my annoying you. The servants are properly instructed. They will be at your orders. I'm sorry – I meant to be more agreeable. Good-bye, Miss Nevers."
She laid her hand in his, lifelessly, then withdrew it. Dumb, dreadfully confused, she looked up at him; then, as he turned coolly away, an inarticulate sound of protest escaped her lips. He halted and turned around.
"It isn't fair – what you are doing – Mr. Desboro."
"What else is there to do?"
"Why do you ask me? Why must the burden of decision always rest with me?"
"But my decision is that I had better go. I can't remain here without – annoying you."
"Why can't you remain here as my employer? Why can't we enjoy matter-of-fact business relations? I ask no more than that – I want no more. I am afraid you think I do expect more – that I expect friendship. It is impossible, unsuitable – and I don't even wish for it – "
"I do," he said.
"How can we be friends, from a social standpoint? There is nothing to build on, no foundation – nothing for friendship to subsist on – "
"Could you and I meet anywhere in the world and become less than friends?" he asked. "Tell me honestly. It is impossible, and you and I both know it."
And, as she made no reply: "Friends – more than friends, possibly; never less. And you know it, and so do I," he said under his breath.
She turned sharply toward the window and looked out across the foggy hills.
"If that is what you believe, Mr. Desboro, perhaps you had better go."
"Do you send me?"
"Always the decision seems to lie with me. Why do you not decide for yourself?"
"I will; and for you, too, if you will let me relieve you of the burden."
"I can carry my own burdens."
Her back was still toward him. After a moment she rested her head against the curtained embrasure, as though tired.
He hesitated; there were good impulses in him, but he went over to her, and scarcely meaning to, put one arm lightly around her waist.
She laid her hands over her face, standing so, golden head lowered and her heart so violent that she could scarcely breathe.
"Jacqueline."
A scarcely perceptible movement of her head, in sign that she listened.
"Are we going to let anything frighten us?" He had not meant to say that, either. He was adrift, knew it, and meant to drop anchor in a moment. "Tell me honestly," he added, "don't you want us to be friends?"
She said, her hands still over her face:
"I didn't know how much I wanted it. I don't see, even now, how it can be. Your own friends are different. But I'll try – if you wish it."
"I do wish it. Why do you think my friends are so different from you? Because some happen to be fashionable and wealthy and idle? Besides, a man has many different kinds of friends – "
She thought to herself: "But he never forgets to distinguish between them. And here it is at last – almost. And I – I do care for him! And here I am – like Cynthia – asking myself to pardon him."
She looked up at him out of her hands, a little pale, then down at his arm, resting loosely around her waist.
"Don't hold me so, please," she said, in a low voice.
"Of course not." But instead he merely took her slender hands between his own, which were not very steady, and looked her straight in the eyes. Such men can do it, somehow. Besides, he really meant to control himself and cast anchor in a moment or two.
"Will you trust me with your friendship?" he said.
"I – seem to be doing it. I don't exactly understand what I am doing. Would you answer me one question?"
"If I can, Jacqueline."
"Then, friendship is possible between a man and a woman, isn't it?" she insisted wistfully.
"I don't know."
"What! Why don't you know? It's merely a matter of mutual interest and respect, isn't it?"
"I've heard so."
"Then isn't a friendship between us possible without anything threatening to spoil it? Isn't it to be just a matter of enjoying together what interests each? Isn't it? Because I don't mind waiving social conditions that can't be helped, and conventions that we simply can't observe."
"Yes, you wonderful girl," he said under his breath, meaning to anchor at once. But he drifted on.
"You know," she said, forcing a little laugh, "I am rather wonderful, to be so honest with a man like you. There's so much about you that I don't care for."
He laughed, enchanted, still retaining her hands between his own, the palms joined together, flat.
"You're so wonderful," he said, "that you make the most wonderful masterpiece in the Desboro collection look like a forgery."
She strove to speak lightly again: "Even the gilding on my hair is real. You didn't think so once, did you?"
"You're all real. You are the most real thing I've ever seen in the world!"
She tried to laugh: "You mustn't believe that I've never before been real when I've been with you. And I may not be real again, for a long time. Make the most of this moment of expansive honesty, Mr. Desboro. I'll remember presently that you are an hereditary enemy."
"Have I ever acted that part?"
"Not toward me."
He reddened: "Toward whom?"
"Oh," she said, with sudden impatience, "do you suppose I have any illusions concerning the sort of man you are? But what do I care, as long as you are nice to me?" she laughed, more confidently. "Men!" she repeated. "I know something about them! And, knowing them, also, I nevertheless mean to make a friend of one of them. Do you think I'll succeed?"
He smiled, then bent lightly and kissed her joined hands.
"Luncheon is served," came the emotionless voice of Farris from the doorway. Their hands fell apart; Jacqueline blushed to her hair and gave Desboro a lovely, abashed look.
She need not have been disturbed. Farris had seen such things before.
That evening, Desboro went back to New York with her and took her to her own door in a taxicab.
"Are you quite sure you can't dine with me?" he asked again, as they lingered on her doorstep.
"I could – but – "
"But you won't!"
One of her hands lay lightly on the knob of the partly open door, and she stood so, resting and looking down the dark street toward the distant glare of electricity where Broadway crossed at right angles.
"We have been together all day, Mr. Desboro. I'd rather not dine with you – yet."
"Are you going to dine all alone up there?" glancing aloft at the lighted windows above the dusky old shop.
"Yes. Besides, you and I have wasted so much time to-day that I shall go down stairs to the office and do a little work after dinner. You see a girl always has to pay for her transgressions."
"I'm terribly sorry," he said contritely. "Don't work to-night!"
"Don't be sorry. I've really enjoyed to-day's laziness. Only it mustn't be like this to-morrow. And anyway, I knew I'd have to make it up to-night."
"I'm terribly sorry," he said again, almost tenderly.
"But you mustn't be, Mr. Desboro. It was worth it – "
He looked up, surprised, flushing with emotion; and the quick colour in her cheeks responded. They remained very still, and confused, and silent, as fire answered fire; suddenly aware how fast they had been drifting.
She turned, nervously, pushed open the door, and entered the vestibule; he held the door ajar for her while she fitted her key with unsteady fingers.
"So – thank you," she said, half turning around, "but I won't dine with you – to-night."
"Then, perhaps, to-morrow – "
"Don't come into town with me to-morrow, Mr. Desboro."
"I'm coming in anyway."
"Why?"
"There's an affair – a kind of a dance. There are always plenty of things to take me into town in the evenings."
"Is that why you came in to-night?" She knew she should not have said it.
He hesitated, then, with a laugh: "I came in to town because it gave me an hour longer with you. Are you going to send me away now?" And her folly was answered in kind.
She said, confused and trying to smile: "You say things that you don't mean. Evening, for us, must always mean 'good-night.'"
"Why, Jacqueline?"
"Because. Also, it is my hour of freedom. You wouldn't take that away from me, would you?"
"What do you do in the evenings?"
"Sew, read, study, attend to the thousand wretched little details which concern my small household. And, sometimes, when I have wasted the day, I make it up at night. Because, whether I have enjoyed it or not, this day has been wasted."
"But sometimes you dine out and go to the theatre and to dances and things?"
"Yes," she said gravely. "But you know there is no meeting ground there for us, don't you?"
"Couldn't you ask me to something?"
"Yes – I could. But you wouldn't care for the people. You know it. They are not like the people to whom you are accustomed. They would only bore you."
"So do many people I know."
"Not in the same way. Why do you ask me? You know it is better not." She added smilingly: "There is neither wealth nor fashion nor intellectual nor social distinction to be expected among my friends – "
She hesitated, and added quietly: "You understand that I am not criticising them. I am merely explaining them to you. Otherwise, I'd ask you to dinner with a few people – I can only have four at a time, my dining room is so small – "
"Ask me, Jacqueline!" he insisted.
She shook her head; but he continued to coax and argue until she had half promised. And now she stood, facing him irresolutely, conscious of the steady drift that was forcing her into uncharted channels with this persuasive pilot who seemed to know no more of what lay ahead of them than did she.
But there was to be no common destination; she understood that. Sooner or later she must turn back toward the harbour they had left so irresponsibly together, her brief voyage over, her last adventure with this man ended for all time.
And now, as the burden of decision still seemed to rest upon her, she offered him her hand, saying good-night; and he took it once more and held it between both of his. Instantly the impending constraint closed in upon them; his face became grave, hers serious, almost apprehensive.
"You have – have made me very happy," he said. "Do you know it, Jacqueline?"
"Yes."