The Woman in the Bazaar

								

girl. He resigned himself to the prospect of struggle, opposition;
nevertheless, he meant to win, though in the end the marriage might have
to be delayed for a reasonable period.
"But your father would never stand in the way of your happiness,
surely?" he argued.
"I shouldn't be happy," she maintained, "if I thought I was behaving
selfishly."
"Of course, to a certain extent you are right," he agreed; "but, after
all, there are limits to unselfishness. Every woman has a just claim to
her own existence." (In the case of his sister this view had not
occurred to him.)
"Do you think so?" she asked doubtfully, in deference to his superior
masculine wisdom.
"Yes, I do. And if you look a little farther, ought she to sacrifice the
happiness of the man who loves her, in addition to her own?"
She blushed again, more deeply, and glanced away from him over the
ragged garden steeped in the languorous peace of a summer sunset. "You
see"--she hesitated--"I know nothing about--love." The word was spoken
timidly, with modest reluctance.
"Sooner or later you are bound to learn its meaning," he said,
controlling his impulse to declare that he would teach her. He
recognised the risk of precipitancy; she must not be alarmed. As it was,
she turned uneasily aside avoiding his gaze; said they ought to go back,
it was getting late, Mrs. Coventry would be waiting for him; nervously
polite little sentences.
In silence he followed her along the path that led to the door in the
garden wall, noting the grace of her slender form, the glint of the
curls that lay on her neck, the cream of the skin beneath the curls.
When they arrived at the door he said abruptly:
"I watched you go through here that morning. You had no hat on, and you
were singing a hymn."
He was trying to close the door that was warped and stiff, so he missed
the puzzled astonishment in her eyes.
"But how could you have seen me? It was ever so long before you came to
the house."
"It was why I came to the house." He banged the door impatiently and
faced her. "It was why I came back," he added with emphasis.
Colour flooded Rafella's face; he thought how adorably she blushed.
"Oh," she gasped; "but I thought it was because of a stone in your
horse's shoe. Didn't you tell the truth?" she questioned severely.
He laughed, delighting in her naive sense of honesty. "There was a stone
all right, I can assure you, and I blessed the excuse. All the same, I
should have come back on some pretext or another. I could hardly have
rung the front door bell and said I had observed a young lady with
golden hair go through this door, and that I wanted to see her again.
Now, could I?"
She turned away, confused, agitated, utterly unable to confront the
tender banter in his eyes. But he had not quite done. As they went into
the vicarage he asked boldly: "Can I come again, very soon, and talk to
you in the garden?"
Though she made no answer he did not feel rebuffed.