CHAPTER V.
FOR a long time Anne Brown remained as it were dazed, as if she had received a blow on the head. When she got back to the Perrys’ house, she felt broken in all her limbs, and slipped up‐stairs and threw herself on her bed. But it was no use: all that day, while attending on the children and doing her usual work, she felt as if some one else were doing it all; while she remained conscious only of something very sudden and strange, of a confused buzzing in her brain, through which she heard the voice of Hamlin repeating his words in the studio; words which somehow made her indignant, angry, and at the same time filled her with a sense of having done something which she should not. This feeling increased page: 155 at night, and she lay awake while the clocks struck hour after hour, hot, red, half deafened by her own blood, fevered and vaguely indignant. It was as if Hamlin had struck her; she felt insulted, outraged, by this strange interference with her fate, this wonderful intrusion of excitement into her dull and sombre life. It was dawn when she awoke: a chill greyness in the sky, reddened by the pale winter sun. She knew that something had happened, that something was changed. She was almost surprised to find herself in her usual room, with the children’s tea‐sets on the chest of drawers, the coloured pictures from the ‘Illustrated’ and the ‘Graphic’ pinned on the walls, the dolls’ houses in the corner, and little May asleep by her side in her crib. Then she remembered it all, and sat up in her bed thinking about it. Things appeared to her in quite a new light. She had been an ungrateful beast to feel as she had towards Hamlin; and a great wave of gratitude and awe, and love and joy, welled up in her heart. It was as if she were sitting page: 156 in the sunshine: an indefinable kind of happiness. How noble and generous and good he had been; and how doubly so, being so great, and she being a mere nothing in the world! Whether he loved her or she him, she did not ask herself; it seemed a thing to die of for sheer happiness, that any one should care for her and her future. And just in proportion to her usual pride, and sullenness, and joylessness, she felt happy in the idea of deserving nothing and receiving everything, from his kindness: and Hamlin, with whom she had spoken not twenty‐four hours earlier, whom she would see again that day, appeared to her as a distant, dim, ineffable creature, lighting and warming her like the sun, but equally unapproachable. But on thinking it over, things came round to commonplace actuality. What was she to do? Would he ask her again? or even, had he asked her at all? It all seemed a dream, and she did not venture to examine into its reality. She determined to tell it all to Perry, and ask his advice; but she felt as page: 157 if she never could. She met Perry several times in the course of the morning, but she could not succeed in screwing up her courage. What if it should all prove to be an illusion? She took the children out for their accustomed walk, during which she was even more silent than usual. On returning home she saw Hamlin in the street, close to the door. The blood all rushed up to her head. Hamlin saluted her as if nothing had happened, and accompanied her up‐stairs. When they were at the landing he suddenly turned to her—
“Have you thought over our conversation in the studio yesterday, Miss Brown?” he asked.
“Yes,” answered Anne, inaudibly, as he stood with his hand on the bell; “I have.”
“Well, then,” went on Hamlin, “with regard to the plan which I submitted to you, what is your answer? Do you consent or not?”
Anne Brown raised her head.
“I consent,” she answered quietly, looking page: 158 full at him, as if to make sure that she was not talking in a dream. He had never seen her so beautiful and majestic before; and she had a look—with dilated eyes, and rapid, oppressed breath—like the one which he had noticed once when she talked of her father, and of which he had felt at once, “this is what I want.”
“Thank you,” he answered gravely, and rang the bell. For a moment they stood in silence, till the door was opened.
