"You are not angry with me for writing it?" he asked anxiously. "I should not have done it; I had no right: but such a desire to do it came over me, I had to; it was such a glory to me to say in writing what you are to me."
She smiled happily. Oh, exquisite day! "I have so long wanted to have a letter from you," she said. "I have almost wished you would go away for a little time, so that I might have a letter from you."
He had guessed this. He had written to give her delight.
"Did you like the first words of it, Grizel?" he asked eagerly.
The lover and the artist spoke together.
Could she admit that the letter was unopened, and why? Oh, the pain to him! She nodded assent. It was not really an untruth, she told herself. She did like them--oh, how she liked them, though she did not know what they were!
"I nearly began 'My beloved,'" he said solemnly.
Somehow she had expected it to be this. "Why didn't you?" she asked, a little disappointed.
"I like the other so much better," he replied. "To write it was so delicious to me, I thought you would not mind."
"I don't mind," she said hastily. (What could it be?)
"But you would have preferred 'beloved'?"
"It is such a sweet name."
"Surely not so sweet as the other, Grizel?"
"No," she said, "no." (Oh, what could it be!)
"Have you destroyed it?" he asked, and the question was a shock to her. Her hand rose instinctively to defend something that lay near her heart.
"I could not," she whispered.
"Do you mean you wanted to?" he asked dolefully.
"I thought you wanted it," she murmured.
"I!" he cried, aghast, and she was joyous again.
"Can't you guess where it is?" she said.
He understood. "Grizel! You carry my letter there!"
She was full of glee; but she puzzled him presently.
"Do you think I could go now?" she inquired eagerly.
"And leave me?"
It was dreadful of her, but she nodded.
"I want to go home."
"Is it not home, Grizel, when you are with me?"
"I want to go away from home, then." She said it as if she loved to tantalize him.
"But why?"
"I won't tell you." She was looking wistfully at the door. "I have something to do."
"It can wait."
"It has waited too long." He might have heard an assenting rustle from beneath her bodice.
"Do let me go," she said coaxingly, as if he held her.
"I can't understand----" he began, and broke off. She was facing him demurely but exultantly, challenging him, he could see, to read her now. "Just when I am flattering myself that I know everything about you, Grizel," he said, with a long face, "I suddenly wonder whether I know anything."
She would have liked to clap her hands. "You must remember that we have changed places," she told him. "It is I who understand you now."
"And I am devoutly glad," he made answer, with humble thankfulness. "And I must ask you, Grizel, why you want to run away from me."
"But you think you know," she retorted smartly. "You think I want to read my letter again!"
Her cleverness staggered him. "But I am right, am I not, Grizel?"
"No," she said triumphantly, "you are quite wrong. Oh, if you knew how wrong you are!" And having thus again unhorsed him, she made her excuses to Ailie and slipped away. Dr. Gemmell, who was present and had been watching her narrowly, misread the flush on her face and her restless desire to be gone.
"Is there anything between those two, do you think?" Mrs. McLean had said in a twitter to him while Tommy and Grizel were talking, and he had answered No almost sharply.
"People are beginning to think there is," she said in self-defence.
"They are mistaken," he told her curtly, and it was about this time that Grizel left. David followed her to her home soon afterwards, and Maggy Ann, who answered his summons, did not accompany him upstairs. He was in the house daily, and she left him to find Grizel for himself. He opened the parlour door almost as he knocked, and she was there, but had not heard him. He stopped short, like one who had blundered unawares on what was not for him.