"God knows I tried," he replied. "I've done my best to see you as you are, without any of this damned romantic nonsense. That was why Iasked you here, and it's increased my folly. When you're gone I shall look out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I believe."He spoke with such vehemence that her relief disappeared; she frowned;and her tone changed to one almost of severity.
"This is what I foretold. We shall gain nothing but unhappiness. Look at me, Ralph." He looked at her. "I assure you that I'm far more ordinary than I appear. Beauty means nothing whatever. In fact, the most beautiful women are generally the most stupid. I'm not that, but I'm a matter-of-fact, prosaic, rather ordinary character; I order the dinner, I pay the bills, I do the accounts, I wind up the clock, and Inever look at a book."
"You forget--" he began, but she would not let him speak.
"You come and see me among flowers and pictures, and think me mysterious, romantic, and all the rest of it. Being yourself very inexperienced and very emotional, you go home and invent a story about me, and now you can't separate me from the person you've imagined me to be. You call that, I suppose, being in love; as a matter of fact it's being in delusion. All romantic people are the same," she added.
"My mother spends her life in making stories about the people she's fond of. But I won't have you do it about me, if I can help it.""You can't help it," he said.
"I warn you it's the source of all evil.""And of all good," he added.
"You'll find out that I'm not what you think me.""Perhaps. But I shall gain more than I lose.""If such gain's worth having."
They were silent for a space.
"That may be what we have to face," he said. "There may be nothing else. Nothing but what we imagine.""The reason of our loneliness," she mused, and they were silent for a time.
"When are you to be married?" he asked abruptly, with a change of tone.
"Not till September, I think. It's been put off.""You won't be lonely then," he said. "According to what people say, marriage is a very queer business. They say it's different from anything else. It may be true. I've known one or two cases where it seems to be true." He hoped that she would go on with the subject. But she made no reply. He had done his best to master himself, and his voice was sufficiently indifferent, but her silence tormented him. She would never speak to him of Rodney of her own accord, and her reserve left a whole continent of her soul in darkness.
"It may be put off even longer than that," she said, as if by an afterthought. "Some one in the office is ill, and William has to take his place. We may put it off for some time in fact.""That's rather hard on him, isn't it?" Ralph asked.
"He has his work," she replied. "He has lots of things that interest him. . . . I know I've been to that place," she broke off, pointing to a photograph. "But I can't remember where it is--oh, of course it's Oxford. Now, what about your cottage?""I'm not going to take it."
"How you change your mind!" she smiled.
"It's not that," he said impatiently. "It's that I want to be where Ican see you."
"Our compact is going to hold in spite of all I've said?" she asked.
"For ever, so far as I'm concerned," he replied.
"You're going to go on dreaming and imagining and making up stories about me as you walk along the street, and pretending that we're riding in a forest, or landing on an island--""No. I shall think of you ordering dinner, paying bills, doing the accounts, showing old ladies the relics--""That's better," she said. "You can think of me to-morrow morning looking up dates in the 'Dictionary of National Biography.'""And forgetting your purse," Ralph added.
At this she smiled, but in another moment her smile faded, either because of his words or of the way in which he spoke them. She was capable of forgetting things. He saw that. But what more did he see?
Was he not looking at something she had never shown to anybody? Was it not something so profound that the notion of his seeing it almost shocked her? Her smile faded, and for a moment she seemed upon the point of speaking, but looking at him in silence, with a look that seemed to ask what she could not put into words, she turned and bade him good night.
