第54章 SYLVIA OF THE LETTERS.(10)

He rose. "You think she means to come?" he asked. Ann also had risen.

"Is she so very wonderful?" she asked.

"I may be exaggerating to myself," he answered. "But I am not sure that I could go on with my work without her--not now."

"You forgot her," flashed Ann, "till we happened to quarrel in the cab."

"I often do," he confessed. "Till something goes wrong. Then she comes to me. As she did on that first evening, six years ago. You see, I have been more or less living with her since then," he added with a smile.

"In dreamland," Ann corrected.

"Yes, but in my case," he answered, "the best part of my life is passed in dreamland."

"And when you are not in dreamland?" she demanded. "When you're just irritable, short-tempered, cranky Matthew Pole. What's she going to do about you then?"

"She'll put up with me," said Matthew.

"No she won't," said Ann. "She'll snap your head off. Most of the 'putting up with' you'll have to do."

He tried to get between her and the window, but she kept her face close to the pane.

"You make me tired with Sylvia," she said. "It's about time you did know what she's like. She's just the commonplace, short-tempered, disagreeable-if-she-doesn't-get-her-own-way, unreasonable woman.

Only more so."

He drew her away from the window by brute force.

"So you're Sylvia," he said.

"I thought that would get it into your head," said Ann.

It was not at all the way she had meant to break it to him. She had meant the conversation to be chiefly about Sylvia. She had a high opinion of Sylvia, a much higher opinion than she had of Ann Kavanagh. If he proved to be worthy of her--of Sylvia, that is, then, with the whimsical smile that she felt belonged to Sylvia, she would remark quite simply, "Well, what have you got to say to her?"

What had happened to interfere with the programme was Ann Kavanagh.

It seemed that Ann Kavanagh had disliked Matthew Pole less than she had thought she did. It was after he had sailed away that little Ann Kavanagh had discovered this. If only he had shown a little more interest in, a little more appreciation of, Ann Kavanagh! He could be kind and thoughtful in a patronising sort of way. Even that would not have mattered if there had been any justification for his airs of superiority.

Ann Kavanagh, who ought to have taken a back seat on this occasion, had persisted in coming to the front. It was so like her.

"Well," she said, "what are you going to say to her?" She did get it in, after all.

"I was going," said Matthew, "to talk to her about Art and Literature, touching, maybe, upon a few other subjects. Also, I might have suggested our seeing each other again once or twice, just to get better acquainted. And then I was going away."

"Why going away?" asked Ann.

"To see if I could forget you."

She turned to him. The fading light was full upon her face.

"I don't believe you could--again," she said.

"No," he agreed. "I'm afraid I couldn't."

"You're sure there's nobody else," said Ann, "that you're in love with. Only us two?"

"Only you two," he said.

She was standing with her hand on old Abner's empty chair. "You've got to choose," she said. She was trembling. Her voice sounded just a little hard.

He came and stood beside her. "I want Ann," he said.

She held out her hand to him.

"I'm so glad you said Ann," she laughed.