We cannot hear it clearly when louder and more selfish voices are beating at our ears, and echoing in our hearts. Some day I shall come back to you, oh! nurse-mother, but not now, not to-day. Give me a little while to strive with this passionate, restless heart, it will wear itself out quickly enough, never fear.
On my way I have pulled a handful of late carnations, and some of Shakespeare's streaked gillyflowers, and I am smelling at them idly, when a fragrant whiff of another sort floats up to me—that of a cigar. This is a remote corner, and people rarely come up so high as this, so I give it no thought, and have closed my tired eyes, and am looking inward at the vista stretching out before me of endless, empty, dull to-morrows, when footsteps, brushing through the short grass, make me open them suddenly, and there stands Paul Vasher.
For a moment I stare at him without speaking, then—"I think I have been asleep!" I say, starting up; "and it must be past five o'clock, time to go in!" As I turn to go he puts out his hand and lays it on my arm.
"Is this game of hide-and-seek to go on for ever?" he asks sternly (a moment ago his face was overspread with a swift gladness.) "Am I always to be avoided by you in this way, morning, noon, and night?" (I am in for it!—he is determined to make a listening gooseberry of me, will-he nill-he.)
"If you call drinking tea———" I begin; then, looking up by accident and catching his eye, I stop short; evasions are always worse than useless with him.
"Your tea can wait," he says; "and you shall not go until you have answered me."
"Shall not! Who will prevent me?"
"I will."
For a moment I look straight at his resolute face and bent brows; then I sit down again and wait for him to begin.
