physically disagreeable to interrupt the stride of one’s thought, and she walked up and down two or three times under the trees before approaching his staircase. She liked getting hold of some book which neither her father or mother had read, and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents in privacy, and pondering the meaning without sharing her thoughts with any one, or having to decide whether the book was a good one or a bad one. This evening she had twisted the words of Dostoevsky to suit her mood—a fatalistic mood—to proclaim that the process of discovery was life, and that, presumably, the nature of one’s goal mattered not at all. She sat down for a moment upon one of the seats; felt herself carried along in the swirl of many things; decided, in her sudden way, that it was time to heave all this thinking overboard, and rose, leaving a fishmonger’s basket on the seat behind her. Two minutes later her rap sounded with authority upon Rodney’s door.
‘Well, William,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I’m late.’
It was true, but he was so glad to see her that he forgot his annoyance. He had been occupied for over an hour in making things ready for her, and he now had his reward in seeing her look right and left, as she slipped her cloak from her shoulders, with evident satisfaction, although she said nothing. He had seen that the fire burnt well; jam-pots were on the table, tin coversay shone in the fender, and the shabby comfort of the room was extreme. He was dressed in his old crimson dressing-gown,az which was faded irregularly, and had bright new patches on it, like the paler grass which one finds on lifting a stone. He made the tea, and Katharine drew off her gloves, and crossed her legs with a gesture that was rather masculine in its ease. Nor did they talk much until they were smoking cigarettes over the fire, having placed their teacups upon the floor between them.
They had not met since they had exchanged letters about their relationship. Katharine’s answer to his protestation had been short and sensible. Half a sheet of notepaper contained the whole of it, for she merely had to say that she was not in love with him, and so could not marry him, but their friendship would continue, she hoped, unchanged. She had added a postscript in which she stated, ‘I like your sonnet very much.’
So far as William was concerned, this appearance of ease was assumed. Three times that afternoon he had dressed himself in a tail-coat, and three times he had discarded it for an old dressing-gown; three times he had placed his pearl tie-pin in position, and three times he had removed it again, the little looking-glass in his room being the witness of these changes of mind. The question was, which would Katharine prefer on this particular afternoon in December? He read her note once more, and the postscript about the sonnet settled the matter. Evidently she admired most the poet in him; and as this, on the whole, agreed with his own opinion, he decided to err, if anything, on the side of shabbiness. His demeanour was also regulated with premeditation; he spoke little, and only on impersonal matters; he wished her to realize that in visiting him for the first time alone she was doing nothing remarkable, although, in fact, that was a point about which he was not at all sure.
Certainly Katharine seemed quite unmoved by any disturbing thoughts; and if he had been completely master of himself, he might, indeed, have complained that she was a trifle absent-minded. The ease, the familiarity of the situation alone with Rodney, among teacups and candles, had more effect upon her than was apparent. She asked to look at his books, and then at his pictures. It was while she held a photograph from the Greek in her hands that she exclaimed, impulsively, if incongruously:
‘My oysters! I had a basket,’ she explained, ‘and I’ve left it somewhere. Uncle Dudley dines with us to-night. What in the world have I done with them?’
She rose and began to wander about the room. William rose also, and stood in front of the fire, muttering, ‘Oysters, oysters—your basket of oysters!’ but though he looked vaguely here and there, as if the oysters might be on top of the bookshelf, his eyes returned always to Katharine. She drew the curtain and looked out among the scanty leaves of the plane-trees.
‘I had them,’ she calculated, ‘in the Strand; I sat on a seat. Well, never mind,’ she concluded, turning back into the room abruptly, ‘I dare say some old creature is enjoying them by this time.’
‘I should have thought that you never forgot anything,’ William remarked, as they settled down again.
‘That’s part of the myth about me, I know,’ Katharine replied. ?nd I wonder,’ William proceeded, with some caution, ’what the truth about you is? But I know this sort of thing doesn’t interest you, ’he added hastily, with a touch of peevishness.
‘No; it doesn’t interest me very much,’ she replied candidly.
‘What shall we talk about then?’ he asked.
She looked rather whimsically round the walls of the room.
‘However we start, we end by talking about the same thing—about poetry, I mean. I wonder if you realize, William, that I’ve never read even Shakespeare? It’s rather wonderful how I’ve kept it up all these years.’
‘You’ve kept it up for ten years very beautifully, as far as I’m concerned,’ he said.
‘Ten years? So long as that?’
And I don’t think it’s always bored you,’ he added.
She looked into the fire silently. She could not deny that the surface of her feeling was absolutely unruffled by anything in William’s character; on the contrary, she felt certain that she could deal with whatever turned up. He gave her peace, in which she could think of things that were far removed from what they talked about. Even now, when he sat within a yard of her, how easily her mind ranged hither and thither! Suddenly a picture presented itself before her, without any effort on her part as pictures will, of herself in these very rooms; she had come in from a lecture, and she held a pile of books in her hand, scientific books, and books about mathematics and astronomy which she had mastered. She put them down on the table over there. It was a picture plucked from her life two or three years hence, when she was married to William; but here she checked herself abruptly.
She could not entirely forget William’s presence, because, in spite of his efforts to control himself, his nervousness was apparent. On such occasions his eyes protruded more than ever, and his face had more than ever the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling skin, through which every flush of his volatile blood showed itself instantly. By this time he had shaped so many sentences and rejected them, felt so many impulses and subdued them, that he was a uniform scarlet.
‘You may say you don’t read books,’ he remarked, ‘but, all the same, you know about them. Besides, who wants you to be learned? Leave that to the poor devils who’ve got nothing better to do. You—you—ahem!—’
‘Well, then, why don’t you read me something before I go?’ said Katharine, looking at her watch.
‘Katharine, you’ve only just come! Let me see now, what have I got to show you?’ He rose, and stirred about the papers on his table, as if in doubt; he then picked up a manuscript, and after spreading it smoothly upon his knee, he looked up at Katharine suspiciously. He caught her smiling.
