And the old conviction rushed upon her once more.
"No one could ever know me absolutely, and then love me just the same."
She did not dwell upon the conviction, which was, however, the most fundamental one that her undeveloped nature was to know.
She thought instead: "Stephen would trust me, and that would make me true. I should really become all that he thinks I am; it would-be the beginning of a new life. I could get away from everyone and everything, and start quite fresh. Up till now I've always been in the wrong atmosphere—at Aunt Marianne's, and at the convent, and even here, where I am still looked upon as a child."
The words produced in her an unexpected and rather disconcerting phenomenon. The days of her childhood, which during the last four years had become infinitely more remote than they would ever be again, sprang into sudden life, and became the only reality in the world.
Stephen—love—marriage: all were words standing for shadowy fancies and remote possibilities, and the actualities of life took shape in the common everyday trivialities that she had always known. Early morning rides with her father; the small plot of earth where she and James and Muriel had dug a hole that was to reach through to Australia; the old Wedgwood blue vase that had stood in the hall ever since she could remember—these were the real things that made up life, after all.
Zella sat amazed.
"What is truth?" she asked despairingly, and dropped on to her knees by the open window.
As though in answer to her question, there was a sudden sound on the terrace below, and she saw the red light of a cigar moving up the flight of stone steps.
With a violently beating heart, Zella bent forward and swiftly extinguished the candles burning on the dressing-table. Then, secure of being herself unseen, she gazed out into the moonlit garden.
Stephen came slowly up the steps and on to the terrace. His fair head was bent, and he was plainly visible in the streaming moonlight.
Zella drew back farther into the shadow of the curtains, her gaze still riveted on the tall figure of the man below.
Almost opposite her window he stopped, and she saw him throw away the unfinished cigar with the abrupt gesture of dismissal that already seemed to her characteristic of him.
"Why is he there, and what is he thinking about?" she wondered wildly, at the same time stifling the conjecture that had instantly occurred to her as to the reason for Stephen's presence and the subject of Stephen's thoughts.
But his next movement answered both questions almost as she asked them. Raising his head with a sudden gesture, Stephen looked straight up at the darkened window, and raised both his arms towards it, outstretched. He remained so for perhaps the space of a second, then let his arms drop to his sides, and turned slowly upon his heel.
Zella heard the sound of the gravel beneath his feet as he moved away.
"He does love me," she thought with triumphant, chaotic joy, and a violent excitement possessed her.
She lit the candles again, and moved rapidly and aimlessly about the room, finally halting before the looking glass.
Her brown hair was tumbled over her shoulders, and her eyes were gleaming like stars.
"He does love me," she repeated to her own image in the glass, and then she suddenly turned and flung herself upon her knees by the bed, hiding her face against it.
For what seemed a long time she was conscious of nothing definite, but presently she found herself deliriously repeating again and again, "He does love me."
Gradually the chaos, into which the world seemed flung, abated. And she stammered the words of the old prayer that alone seemed to come to her: "Oh God, let it be all right. Stephen does love me. I don't deserve for anyone to love me. I will marry Stephen and begin again. Let it be all right."
Later on in the night, as she lay sleepless and wide-eyed in the semi-darkness, Zella told herself that no words of Stephen's could ever prove more eloquent than that mute gesture when he had thought himself unseen.
"And to think I wasn't sure, and wondered if it was real!" she thought. "Love is the realest thing, and I know that I shall marry Stephen."
She remained unaware that her decision had been taken at the moment when Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had applied to her the adjectives "young " and "inexperienced."
XXVIII
IT was on the night of Zella's birthday that St. Algers was allowed to indulge his peculiar desire for a fancy-dress dinner. Hurried notes were sent to the houses within possible distance of a drive, and an impromptu dance organized.
"It is only for once in a way, after all, and one must amuse young people," Mrs. Lloyd-Evans felt impelled to observe apologetically to her brother-in-law, who replied candidly:
"I admit to you, Marianne, that it also amuses me, though I am not a young person. It will be most entertaining to devise these costumes."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans became slightly reserved in manner.
"I quite see what you mean, dear Louis. A little fun and nonsense is harmless from time to time, as I always say; and though it may seem silly enough to us, all this dressing-up amuses these boys and girls, I suppose."
It amuses me far more than it does them," said Louis briskly. "Amusement is not at all the predominant factor in James's feelings this morning, unless I am much mistaken. And Pontisbury is probably overwhelmed by the British fear that any sort of fancy dress must necessarily make a fool of him. Even Miss St. Craye is contemptuous, and declines to admit any interest in the subject."
"That is a mere pose, Louis, and great nonsense besides. But I am delighted," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with sorrowful astonishment, "to hear that all this is amusing you. I suppose you do not intend to dress up yourself?"
"Why not? I have, on the contrary, every intention of doing so, and am now on my way to find out whether I am grown too corpulent for any of my old theatrical costumes!"
He was gone before Mrs. Lloyd-Evans could devise any allusion that should be at once tactful and pointed, as to the suitability or otherwise of middle-aged widowers making mountebanks of themselves. She retreated sombrely into the morning-room, and, finding Stephen Pontisbury there in earnest conversation with Zella, exclaimed with ready ease that one only had to come downstairs in order to find that one's knitting was upstairs, and made her exit with smiling naturalness through the French window into the garden.
Stephen had not, as Zella had half expected, sought her at eleven o'clock in the morning in order to ask her to marry him.
But he sat on the arm of the sofa, swinging one large foot gently to and fro, and looking at her with intent blue eyes.
"I wanted to give you a birthday present," he said slowly. "It isn't new, but—it's just something I care about a great deal."
She raised her eyes to his, and was wise enough to keep a silence which might be translated into the appropriate words which she was unable to find.
He was balancing a flat volume upon his palm.
"I've had this by me since I was a boy," he said deliberately. "It's been in camp, and in a hut out at 'Frisco, and other places, too, back o' beyond. . . ."
He paused.
Zella felt as though they were two people in a book. "The stain on the cover here has a story, though it's not one I could tell you." "Tell me."
He shook his head, with a half-smile.
"Not that—no.