for having come. A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was palpable to Maggie's thinking that he had dined hastily in his own room for the sake of setting off again and finding her alone.
A boyish state of mind of an accomplished young gentleman of five and twenty, not without legal knowledge! But a reference to history, perhaps, may make it not incredible.
At this moment Maggie's ball of knitting-wool rolled along the ground and she started up to reach it. Stephen rose too, and, picking up the ball, met her with a vexed complaining look that gave his eyes quite a new expression to Maggie, whose own eyes met them as he presented the ball to her.
`Good-by,' said Stephen, in a tone that had the same beseeching discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand - he thrust both hands into his tail pockets as he spoke. Maggie thought she had perhaps been rude.
`Won't you stay?' she said timidly, not looking away - for that would have seemed rude again.
`No, thank you,' said Stephen, looking still into the half-unwilling, half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks towards the track of the distant brook. `The boat is waiting for me,... You'll tell your cousin.'
`Yes.'
`That I brought the music, I mean.'
`Yes.'
`And that Philip is come back.'
`Yes.' (Maggie did not notice Philip's name this time.)
`Won't you come out a little way into the garden?' said Stephen, in a still gentler tone, but the next moment he was vexed that she did not say `No,' for she moved away now towards the open window, and he was obliged to take his hat and walk by her side. But he thought of something to make him amends.
`Do take my arm,' he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret.
There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm: the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help - the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. Either on that ground or some other, Maggie took the arm. And they walked together round the grassplot and under the drooping green of the laburnums, in the same dim dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of an hour before; only that Stephen had had the look he longed for, without yet perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and Maggie had darting thoughts across the dimness: - how came she to be there? - why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been, each would have been less intensely conscious of the other.
`Take care of this step,' said Stephen, at last.
`O, I will go in now,' said Maggie, feeling that the step had come like a rescue. `Good evening.'
In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was running back to the house. She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to the embarrassing recollections of the last half-hour - she had no thought left for that. She only threw herself into the low armchair, and burst into tears.
`O Philip, Philip, I wish we were together again - so quietly - in the Red Deeps.'