Chapter XXVII

“Do you think the lamp will keep you awake?” Rusk asked.

It was a reading-lamp and threw a bright light only in one direction, leaving the rest of the room in shadow.

Denis was already in bed. “No,” he murmured, drowsily.

“You are sure?”

“Quite sure, thanks.” And he turned over on his pillow.

Rusk put on his dressing-gown and sat down. He would have given a good deal to know what had been, what was now, passing in Denis’s mind; but how in the world was he to find out? The boy was perfectly inscrutable; it was really amazing how little Rusk could count on his betraying himself.

For an hour the young man sat in an attitude of one too comfortable or too drowsy to take the trouble to go to bed, but in reality he was extremely _un_comfortable, extremely wakeful and solicitous. He came to the conclusion that he had made a most hopeless fool of himself, and that he might hear a good deal more of the matter before he was done with it. Why had he been such an idiot--he who, up to that moment, had been so careful? There was something incredibly stupid and disagreeable about the whole episode, and it might have all kinds of consequences. Suppose May were to tell her mother! It would simply mean that he should have to go, and he knew all that this in its turn signified. Nothing could ever have been further from his desire than to sacrifice Denis to Amy, yet what else had he done? And he did not even care for her! This particular element in the matter might savour delightfully of the irony characteristic of human affairs, but Rusk was in no mood to appreciate irony. The thought that Doctor Birch attached so great an importance to his remaining with his pupil awoke, instead, all sorts of unpleasant possibilities within his mind. Doctor Birch had never entered into particulars, but this left only a freer field to Rusk’s unaided imagination, which proceeded now to improvise on several lugubrious themes, while his whole being was stirred into a violent resentment against the girl directly responsible.

Denis had dropped asleep long ago, and his low, regular breathing was the only sound audible in the dim, quiet room. Rusk, leaning his head back, gazed up at the ceiling without discovering much inspiration there. Everything, he felt, depended on what May would do, on the relation existing between the two girls. He had got no further than this, when the handle of the door turned silently and the door itself was opened. He started, for he had heard no footsteps in the passage outside, and, with the movement he gave, he knocked a book off the edge of the table. It fell to the floor with what seemed a quite unnecessary bang--enough, he thought, to waken the whole house. Amy was there, standing in the doorway, her long red hair floating about her shoulders. She was dressed in something loose and soft and white, which revealed the creamy pallor of her beautiful rounded arms. Her feet were bare. She advanced into the room a step or two, closing the door carefully behind her.

“I came to see if you were still angry with me,” she said in a low voice. “I thought perhaps you might be reading; I looked for a light under your door. There is something I must tell you.”

In the obscurity of the room, and with her gaze fixed on Rusk, she had not noticed the other bed. Now it gave a sharp creak, and glancing in that direction she saw her brother sitting up and staring at her, his eyes still dark and liquid with sleep. She started, and barely checked the little cry that rose in her throat. “What are you doing here?” she whispered furiously, her face completely transformed, distorted by a rage and disappointment that were like the swift leaping up of a fire in a darkened house. In a moment she had recovered herself, but that bright, brief flash had been intensely, cruelly revealing, and Rusk could see nothing else.

“He has come to keep me company,” he answered. He had grown very red in the face and stood, erect and frowning, in an attitude that barred Amy’s further progress.

“I suppose you were frightened to sleep by yourself,” she went on fiercely to her brother. “You poor, little, puny, miserable coward. You were frightened of the dark, weren’t you?”

Denis, still half-asleep, blinked at her without replying. He then turned to his tutor. “What does she want?” he asked quaintly.

“Nothing. Lie down and go to sleep again.”

Denis obeyed. At all events he lay down and shut his eyes, turning his back to the other occupants of the room. Rusk took a step toward him as if to see that he had done so. He remained for a few seconds in this position, purposely, and when he looked round again Amy had disappeared. He swore softly, though rather savagely, to himself, as he stared out into the dark passage, but he made no movement, waiting, as if to give her time to get back to her own room. He gave her plenty, several minutes in fact; then he shut the door and began to undress. Denis still lay there, with his face to the wall, in an absolute silence that somehow did not suggest slumber. If he _were_ asleep, Rusk felt half-inclined to wake him up and ask him just what ideas had been forming themselves in his mind during the past few hours. But he did not yield to this impulse. “Damnation,” he muttered, as he picked up the fallen book.