«We can talk about that now. I think it came on when we were discussing Hamlet.»
«Only then! Bradley, you terrify me. Honestly, I think you should think twice about this. Aren't you just acting out of some momentary emotional impulse? Aren't you all mixed up? Won't you feel quite different next week? I thought at least-«You're not serious, Julian? No, no-you can see that this is something very absolute. The past has folded up. There's no history. It's the last trump.»
«I know-«One can't calculate, measure. But-oh my dear-we are in a fix, aren't we. Come here.» I drew her to me and got her liony head up against my chest.
«I don't see any fix about it,» she said into my clean blue pinstriped shirt, of which she was undoing the upper buttons. «Of course we must move very slowly and test ourselves against time and-not be in a hurry to do- anything-«I agree,» I said, «that we should not be in a hurry to do-anything.» She was not making it easy, however, thrusting her hand inside my shirt, and sighing, and grasping the curly grey hair of my front.
«You don't think that I'm behaving badly, shamelessly?»
«No, Julian, my dear heart.»
«I have to touch you. It's so marvellous, such a sort of privilege-«
«I feel a lot of things,» I said. «Some of them were expressed by Marvell. But what I mainly feel-no, let me talk-is this. I'm totally unworthy of this love which you are offering to me. I won't go on boringly about my unworthiness, but it's there. I am prepared to carry on slowly as you say and let you convince me and convince yourself that you really feel what you now seem to feel. But meanwhile you mustn't be in any way bound or tied-«But I am tied-«You must be completely free-«Bradley, don't be-«I think we even shouldn't use certain words.»
«What words?»
» 'Love,'
'in love.' «
«I think that's silly. But while we've got eyes I suppose we can give words a rest. Look. Can't you see what you won't name?»
«Please. I honestly think we shouldn't define this thing at all. We must just be quiet and patient and see what happens.»
«You sound so anxious.»
«I'm terrified.»
«I'm not. I've never felt braver in my life. What are you afraid of? And why did you say we were in a fix? What fix are we in?»
«I'm very much older than you are. Very much. That's the fix.»
«Oh that. That's simply a convention. It doesn't touch us at all.»
«It does touch us,» I said. I felt its touch.
«Is that all you meant?»
I hesitated. «Yes.» There was much that I would have some day to lay before her. But not today.
«It's not-«Oh Julian, you don't know me, you don't know me-«It's not Christian?»
«What? Christian? God no!»
