The benediction sent them from the cool dimness into the sunlight, and she looked down the street toward the post-office.
“It's quite at the other end of the street,” Farringdon said, opening his umbrella and tentatively discouraging the effort. “By the way, your letter won't leave, I remember, until the seven-o'clock train. The Brathwaites are leaving by that train; you can send your letter down then.”
She found herself accepting this proposition, for the blaze of the sun on the length of the dusty street was deterring. They walked back almost in silence the way they had come; but with his hand on Mrs. Manstey's gate and the house less than two hundred yards away, Farringdon paused.
“You have been writing to 'Christopher,'” he said, quietly. “I don't want you to send the letter.” He was quite pale, but she did not notice it or the tensity of his face; his audacity made her for the moment dumb.
“You don't want me to--!” She positively gasped. “I never heard of such--”
“Impertinence,” he supplied, gravely. “It looks that way, I know, but it isn't. I can't stand on conventions--I've too much at stake. I don't mean to lose _you_--as you lost your letter!”
She thought she was furious. “You knew it was my letter!” she accused.
They had paused just within the gate, in the shade of a great mulberry-tree that stood sentinel.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Not at first--but I guessed it. My name,” he added, “is Christopher, too.”
He took a crumpled sheet, that had been smoothed and folded carefully, from his pocket. “Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked, in a low voice.
“It blew to me. Such things don't happen every day.” He had taken off his hat, and, bareheaded, he bent and looked questioningly into her eyes. “My name is Christopher,” he repeated. “I can't--it isn't possible--that I can let another Christopher have that letter.”
“I”--he paused--“I play tennis very well, you said. I play to win! What I give to the interest of a game--”
“Is nothing to what you give to the interests of Christopher!”
As she mockingly spoke, Farringdon caught a glimpse of one or two people strolling down from the house. “That letter,” he hastily said,--“you can't take it from me! Do you remember that wind? It blew _you_ to _me!_ Dearest, _darling_, don't be angry. You _can't_ take yourself away.”