He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of personality which he dreaded. The whole situation needed the most careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves. And yet each sentence brought him relief. He was coming to understand something or other about his own desires hitherto undefined by him, the source of his difficulty with Katharine. The wish to hurt her, which had urged him to begin, had completely left him, and he felt that it was only Katharine now who could help him to be sure. He must take his time. There were so many things that he could not say without the greatest difficulty-that name, for example, Cassandra. Nor could he move his eyes from a certain spot, a fiery glen surrounded by high mountains, in the heart of the coals. He waited in suspense for Katharine to continue. She had said that he might be very happy with some one he loved in that way.
‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t last with you,’ she resumed. ‘I can imagine a certain sort of person—’ she paused; she was aware that he was listening with the greatest intentness, and that his formality was merely the cover for an extreme anxiety of some sort. There was some person then—some woman—who could it be? Cassandra? Ah, possibly-A person,’ she added, speaking in the most matter-of-fact tone she could command, ‘like Cassandra Otway, for instance. Cassandra is the most interesting of the Otways—with the exception of Henry. Even so, I like Cassandra better. She has more than mere cleverness. She is a character—a person by herself.’
‘Those dreadful insects!’ burst from William, with a nervous laugh, and a little spasm went through him as Katharine noticed. It was Cassandra then. Automatically and dully she replied, ‘You could insist that she confined herself to—to—something else ... But she cares for music; I believe she writes poetry; and there can be no doubt that she has a peculiar charm—’
She ceased, as if defining to herself this peculiar charm. After a moment’s silence William jerked out,
‘I thought her affectionate?’
‘Extremely affectionate. She worships Henry. When you think what a house that is—Uncle Francis always in one mood or another—’
‘Dear, dear, dear,’ William muttered.
And you have so much in common.’
‘My dear Katharine!’ William exclaimed, flinging himself back in his chair, and uprooting his eyes from the spot in the fire. ‘I really don’t know what we’re talking about ... I assure you ... ’
He was covered with an extreme confusion.
He withdrew the finger that was still thrust between the pages of Gulliver, opened the book, and ran his eye down the list of chapters, as though he were about to select the one most suitable for reading aloud. As Katharine watched him, she was seized with preliminary symptoms of his own panic. At the same time she was convinced that, should he find the right page, take out his spectacles, clear his throat, and open his lips, a chance that would never come again in all their lives would be lost to them both.
‘We’re talking about things that interest us both very much,’ she said. ‘Shan’t we go on talking, and leave Swift for another time? I don’t feel in the mood for Swift, and it’s a pity to read any one when that’s the case—particularly Swift.’
The pretence of wise literary speculation, as she calculated, restored William’s confidence in his security, and he replaced the book in the bookcase, keeping his back turned to her as he did so, and taking advantage of this circumstance to summon his thoughts together.
But a second of introspection had the alarming result of showing him that his mind, when looked at from within, was no longer familiar ground. He felt, that is to say, what he had never consciously felt before; he was revealed to himself as other than he was wont to think him; he was afloat upon a sea of unknown and tumultuous possibilities. He paced once up and down the room, and then flung himself impetuously into the chair by Katharine’s side. He had never felt anything like this before; he put himself entirely into her hands; he cast off all responsibility. He very nearly exclaimed aloud:
‘You’ve stirred up all these odious and violent emotions, and now you must do the best you can with them.’
Her near presence, however, had a calming and reassuring effect upon his agitation, and he was conscious only of an implicit trust that, somehow, he was safe with her, that she would see him through, find out what it was that he wanted, and procure it for him.
‘I wish to do whatever you tell me to do,’ he said. ‘I put myself entirely in your hands, Katharine.’
‘You must try to tell me what you feel,’ she said.
‘My dear, I feel a thousand things every second. I don’t know, I’m sure, what I feel. That afternoon on the heath—it was then—then—’ He broke off; he did not tell her what had happened then. ‘Your ghastly good sense, as usual, has convinced me—for the moment but what the truth is, Heaven only knows!’ he exclaimed.
‘Isn’t it the truth that you are, or might be, in love with Cassandra?’ she said gently.
William bowed his head. After a moment’s silence he murmured:
‘I believe you’re right, Katharine.’
She sighed, involuntarily. She had been hoping all this time, with an intensity that increased second by second against the current of her words, that it would not in the end come to this. After a moment of surprising anguish, she summoned her courage to tell him how she wished only that she might help him, and had framed the first words of her speech when a knock, terrific and startling to people in their overwrought condition, sounded upon the door.
‘Katharine, I worship you,’ he urged, half in a whisper.
‘Yes,’ she replied, withdrawing with a little shiver, ‘but you must open the door.’
CHAPTER XXIII
WHEN RALPH DENHAM ENTERED the room and saw Katharine seated with her back to him, he was conscious of a change in the grade of the atmosphere such as a traveller meets with sometimes upon the roads, particularly after sunset, when, without warning, he runs from clammy chill to a hoard of unspent warmth in which the
