A minute or two later Rosemary was startled out of her day-dream by the sound of Jasper's voice calling to her from somewhere in the near distance. She had barely time to obliterate the traces of tears from her eyes and cheeks before he appeared round the bend of the path. The next moment he was by her side. Apparently he had been running, for he seemed breathless and not quite so trim and neat in his appearance as he usually was.
"I heard a scream," were the first words he said, as soon as he came in sight of her. "It terrified me when I recognised your voice. Thank God you are safe!"
He was obviously exhausted and, for him, strangely agitated. He threw himself down on the carpet of moss at her feet; then he seized her hand and covered it with kisses. "Thank God!" he kept on murmuring. "Thank God you are safe!"
Then suddenly he looked up at her with an inquiring frown. "But what made you scream?" he asked.
Rosemary by now had regained control over her nerves. She succeeded in disengaging her hand, and in smiling quite coolly down upon him.
"It was very stupid of me," she said, with a light laugh. "I saw a pair of eyes looking at me through the undergrowth. It startled me. I thought that it was a wild cat—I had heard that there were some in these parts—but it was only a homely one."
She tried to rise, but Jasper had recaptured her hand. He was engaged, in kissing her finger-tips one by one, lingering over each kiss as if to savour its sweetness in full. Now he looked up at her with a glance of hungering passion. Rosemary felt herself flushing. She was conscious of an intense feeling of pity for this man who had lavished on her all the love of which he was capable, and hungered for that which she was not able to give. He looked care-worn, she thought, and weary.
"You were not anxious about me, Jasper, were you?" she asked kindly.
He smiled. "I am always anxious," he said, "when I don't see you."
"But how did you find me?"
"Quite easily; I went to the hotel, you know. Not at all a bad little place, by the way; rather primitive, but with electric light and plenty of hot water. I engaged the rooms, and had a mouthful of breakfast. Then I sallied forth in quest of you. A man in the village told me you had been asking the way to the château, and I knew you would never stand the dusty road. So when I found that there was a woodland path that went through the same way as the road, I naturally concluded that you would choose it in preference. You see," Jasper concluded, with a smile, "that there was no magic in my quest."
Then he looked up at her again, and there was a gleam of suspicion in his dark, questioning eyes. "You must have walked very slowly," he said. "I started quite half an hour, probably more, after you did."
"I did walk very slowly. This path is enchanting, and this is not the first time I have sat down to think and to gaze at this delicious little stream. But," Rosemary went on briskly, "I think I had better be getting on."
But Jasper put out his arms and encircled her knees. "Don't go for a minute, little one. It is so peaceful here, and somehow I have had so little of you these last days. I don't know, but it seems as if we had taken to misunderstanding one another lately." Then, as she made an involuntary movement of impatience, he continued gently: "Do I annoy you by making love to you?"
Rosemary tried to smile. "Of course not, dear. What a question!"
"Then tell me if there is anything in the world I can do to make you happier. You have not looked happy lately. I have been tortured with remorse, for I feel somehow that it has been my fault."
"You are sweet and kind, Jasper, as always. But you must be a little patient. I have gone through a great deal these last few days."
"I know, I know, little one. Don't let us talk any more about it."
He was wonderfully kind—kinder and gentler than he had been since the first days of their married life. It almost seemed as if he had set himself the task of making her forget all that he had involuntarily revealed to her of his violent, unbridled temperament, and of that lawless passion that lay at the root of his love for her.
He talked of the future, of their return to England, the home that he' would make for her, which would be a fitting casket for the priceless jewel which he possessed. Rosemary, who felt inexpressibly lonely, was once more conscious of that feeling of gratitude towards him which she had once hoped might be transmuted in days to come into something more ardent than friendship. She had suffered so terribly in her love for the one man who, with all his faults, had come very near to her ideals that she felt a desperate longing to cherish and to cling to the husband whom she had chosen half out of pique, the man on whom she had inflicted so much cruelty by becoming his wife.