"You go home and think of all this," he said, "and talk about it to-morrow. Don't, don't say anything now, not anything. As for loving you, I do. I do--with all my heart. It's no good hiding it any more. I could never have talked to you like this, forgetting everything that parts us, forgetting even your age, if I did not love you utterly. If I were a clean, free man--We'll have to talk of all these things. Thank goodness there's plenty of opportunity! And we two can talk. Anyhow, now you've begun it, there's nothing to keep us in all this from being the best friends in the world. And talking of every conceivable thing. Is there?""Nothing," said Ann Veronica, with a radiant face.
"Before this there was a sort of restraint--a make-believe. It's gone.""It's gone."
"Friendship and love being separate things. And that confounded engagement!""Gone!"
They came upon a platform, and stood before her compartment.
He took her hand and looked into her eyes and spoke, divided against himself, in a voice that was forced and insincere.
"I shall be very glad to have you for a friend," he said, "loving friend. I had never dreamed of such a friend as you."She smiled, sure of herself beyond any pretending, into his troubled eyes. Hadn't they settled that already?
"I want you as a friend," he persisted, almost as if he disputed something.
Part 5
The next morning she waited in the laboratory at the lunch-hour in the reasonable certainty that he would come to her.
"Well, you have thought it over?" he said, sitting down beside her.
"I've been thinking of you all night," she answered.
"Well?"
"I don't care a rap for all these things."He said nothing for a space.
"I don't see there's any getting away from the fact that you and I love each other," he said, slowly. "So far you've got me and Iyou. . . . You've got me. I'm like a creature just wakened up.
My eyes are open to you. I keep on thinking of you. I keep on thinking of little details and aspects of your voice, your eyes, the way you walk, the way your hair goes back from the side of your forehead. I believe I have always been in love with you.
Always. Before ever I knew you."
She sat motionless, with her hand tightening over the edge of the table, and he, too, said no more. She began to tremble violently.
He stood up abruptly and went to the window.
"We have," he said, "to be the utmost friends."She stood up and held her arms toward him. "I want you to kiss me," she said.
He gripped the window-sill behind him.
"If I do," he said. . . . "No! I want to do without that. Iwant to do without that for a time. I want to give you time to think. I am a man--of a sort of experience. You are a girl with very little. Just sit down on that stool again and let's talk of this in cold blood. People of your sort-- I don't want the instincts to--to rush our situation. Are you sure what it is you want of me?""I want you. I want you to be my lover. I want to give myself to you. I want to be whatever I can to you." She paused for a moment. "Is that plain?" she asked.
"If I didn't love you better than myself," said Capes, "Iwouldn't fence like this with you.
"I am convinced you haven't thought this out," he went on. "You do not know what such a relation means. We are in love. Our heads swim with the thought of being together. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed to respectability and this laboratory;you're living at home. It means . . . just furtive meetings.""I don't care how we meet," she said.
"It will spoil your life."
"It will make it. I want you. I am clear I want you. You are different from all the world for me. You can think all round me.
You are the one person I can understand and feel--feel right with. I don't idealize you. Don't imagine that. It isn't because you're good, but because I may be rotten bad; and there's something--something living and understanding in you. Something that is born anew each time we meet, and pines when we are separated. You see, I'm selfish. I'm rather scornful. I think too much about myself. You're the only person I've really given good, straight, unselfish thought to. I'm ****** a mess of my life--unless you come in and take it. I am. In you--if you can love me--there is salvation. Salvation. I know what I am doing better than you do. Think--think of that engagement!"Their talk had come to eloquent silences that contradicted all he had to say.
She stood up before him, smiling faintly.
"I think we've exhausted this discussion," she said.
"I think we have," he answered, gravely, and took her in his arms, and smoothed her hair from her forehead, and very tenderly kissed her lips.
Part 6
They spent the next Sunday in Richmond Park, and mingled the happy sensation of being together uninterruptedly through the long sunshine of a summer's day with the ample discussion of their position. "This has all the clean freshness of spring and youth," said Capes; "it is love with the down on; it is like the glitter of dew in the sunlight to be lovers such as we are, with no more than one warm kiss between us. I love everything to-day, and all of you, but I love this, this--this innocence upon us most of all.
"You can't imagine," he said, "what a beastly thing a furtive love affair can be.
"This isn't furtive," said Ann Veronica.
