She turned her face to him, smiling and then laughing.
'Oh, to be a child again,' she said.
'One can always be a child,' he said. 'It is just an attitude of mind. I wish I had known you when you were younger – before you armored yourself in cynicism and scorn to hide all the pain and anger. I wish you had not had to live through all that, Cass. I wish I could will it away or kiss it away, but I can't. I can only assure you that you will harm only yourself if you remain closed against all the possible goodness the world and life have to offer you.'
'What is the guarantee,' she said, 'that life will not punch me in the eye again?'
'Alas,' he said, 'there is none. But it is my belief that the world is far fuller of goodness than it is of evil. And if that seems rather naive, let me put in another way. I believe goodness and love are far stronger than evil and hatred.'
'Angels are stronger than devils?' she asked, smiling.
'Yes,' he said. 'Always.'
She lifted her arms and set her hands gently against the sides of his face.
'Thank you, Stephen,' she said, and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
'Besides,' he said, 'you know more about love than you realize. You became my mistress not just because of your own poverty, or even primarily because of it. You have a companion who is perhaps too old to find satisfactory employment, and you have a maid who is probably unemployable if she tries to keep her illegitimate child with her. You have the child herself. And the dog. He is a member of your family too.
You did it all for them, Cass. You sacrificed yourself for love.'
'With such a beautiful man,' she said, 'it was hardly a sacrifice, was it?'
She was using her velvet voice.
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'It was.'
She set her hands flat on the branch to either side of her and tipped her head sideways to rest against his chest.
'It is strange,' she said, 'how speaking of the unspeakable has released something. I feel very… happy. Is that why you did it? Is that why you asked?'
He dipped his head to set his lips against her warm hair.
'Are /you/ happy?' she asked him.
'Yes,' he said.
'But it is not quite the right word,' she said. 'You promised me joy today, Stephen, and you have delivered. They are not quite the same, are they – happiness and joy?'
They stayed as they were for a while, and he found himself wishing that time would stand still, at least for a while. There was something about her that drew him. It was not just her beauty. It was certainly not her seductive ways. It was… He could not put words to what it was. He had never been in love, but he did not imagine that this was what being in love felt like. How puzzling human emotions could be at times – though he had not noticed it much before meeting Cassandra.
'Happiness is more fleeting,' he said, 'joy more enduring.'
She sighed and raised her head.
'But then comes disaster,' she said. 'Someone goes off to drink for three days, and… And there goes happiness. Does joy remain? How can it?'
'One day,' he said, 'you will learn that love does not always betray you, Cass.'
She smiled at him.
'You are the only person who has ever called me that,' she said. 'I like it. I will remember it – that private name spoken in your voice.'
She kissed him briefly on the lips again and swung her legs over the side of the branch and joined him on his.
'This is the point,' she said, 'at which one realizes that climbing a tree was not such a wise idea after all. One has to go back down, and descending is always ten times harder than ascending.'
But she laughed when he would have offered assistance and swung her way down to the ground as if she had been climbing trees every day since she was a girl. She was smiling up at him when he jumped down onto the ground to join her, and he thought he had never in his life seen anyone lovelier.
Cass joyful.
It was a picture he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Very close to his heart. /Dangerously/ close.
For despite everything, she had killed her husband, and there was no denying that as a dark, heavy burden she must carry with her through life.
And there was no denying that it would be a heavy burden for him to consider shouldering if he were ever to consider falling in love with her. /If?/ Was it already too late?
What the devil did falling in love /feel/ like?
/15/
STEPHEN spent the morning of the following day at the House of Lords, participating in a debate on an issue that particularly interested him.
He went to White's afterward, as he often did, for a late luncheon with some of his friends and would probably have proceeded to the races with them if his mind had not been distracted by something – or someone – he had seen from a distance just before arriving at the club.
Wesley Young.
And of course his mind had been on Cassandra ever since yesterday. She had even inhabited his dreams. He had been standing on that tree branch again, kissing her, and they had floated off into the sky, happy enough until they tried to find their way back while she fretted over the fact that the dog needed to be fed and he tried to see where they were going through her windswept red hair.
Such an absurd dream.
He could not remember dreaming about a woman ever before.
'Does anyone know where Sir Wesley Young lives?' he asked now of no one in particular.
All of them shook their heads except Talbot, who seemed to recall that Young had bachelor rooms on St. James's Street, not far from the club.
The house with the bilious yellow door and the semicircular fanlight above it.
'I remember standing in front of that door after having a few drinks, while Young fumbled with his key,' Talbot said. 'And it did nothing to settle my stomach, I can tell you, Merton. It quite put me off drinking more than half a dozen glasses more once I was inside.'
The fact that he had seen Young not far from here might mean, Stephen thought, that he had been going home for luncheon – or leaving to take it elsewhere.
He disappointed himself and a few of his friends by deciding against going to the races. He went instead in search of the bilious yellow door, which turned out to be not quite so bilious after all when viewed in sunlight and with a sober stomach.
Stephen knocked upon it.
This was really quite irrational, he realized. And purely impulsive. He was not even sure why he was doing it except that he had somehow got himself – and his emotions – entangled with Cassandra and could not resist the reprehensible urge to interfere in her life.
He ought not to be doing it. She had not asked it of him.
He had not even made any arrangement to see her again after yesterday's picnic. He had felt the need of a cooling-off period. Within four days he had got himself embroiled in madness. It was quite unlike him. He led a normally tranquil, rather predictable life, and he liked it.
His dream had not cooperated with his very sensible decision, of course.
Neither had his waking spells when, if he was honest with himself, he had lain in his bed wanting her, desire
