Dark as it was Irma could picture him at her side, could see him in detail. She had an excellent memory. She was enjoying what she saw. Her mind's eye had suddenly become a most powerful organ. It was, in point of fact, stronger, clearer and healthier than those real eyes of hers which gave her so much trouble.
And so, as she spoke to him she had no sense of communing with an invisible presence. The darkness was forgotten.
'Mr Bellgrove?'
'My dear lady?'
'Somehow, I knew...'
'So did I... so did I.'
'It is more than I dare dwell upon - this strange and beautiful fact - that words can be so unnecessary - that when I start a sentence, there is no 'need' to finish it - and all this, so very suddenly. I said, so 'very' suddenly.'
'What would be sudden to the young is leisurely for us. What would be foolhardy in them is child's- play itself, for you, my dear, and for me. We are mature, my dear. We are ripe. The golden glaze, that patina of time, these are upon us. Hence we are sure and have no callow qualms. Let us admit the length of our teeth, lady. Time, it is true, had flattened our feet, ah yes, but with what purpose? To steady us, to give us balance, to take us safely along the mountain tracks. God bless me... ah. God bless me. Do you think that I could have wooed and won you as a youth? Not in a hundred years! And why... ah... and why? Inexperience. That is the answer. But now, in half an hour or less, I have stormed you; stormed you. But am I breathless? No. I have brought my guns to bear upon you, and yet my dear, have scores of roundshot left... ah yes, yes, Irma my ripe one... and you can see it all?... you can see it all?... dammit, we have equipoise and that is what it is.'
Irma's mental sight was frighteningly clear. His voice had sharpened the edges of his image.
'But I'm not very old, Mr Bellgrove, am I,' said Irma, after a pause. To be sure she felt as young as a fledgeling.
'What is age? What is time!' said Bellgrove - and then answering himself in a darker voice. 'They're 'hell'!' he said. 'I hate 'em.'
'No, no. I won't have it,' said Irma. 'I won't, Mr Bellgrove. Age and time are what you make them. Let us not speak of them again.'
Bellgrove sat forward on his old buttocks. 'Lady!' he said suddenly, 'I have thought of something that I think you will agree is more than comic.'
'Have you, Mr Bellgrove?'
'Pertaining to what you said about Age and Time. Are you listening, my dear?'
'Yes, Mr Bellgrove... eagerly... eagerly!'
'What I think would be rather droll would be to say, in a gathering, when the moment became opportune - perhaps during some conversation about clocks - one could work round to it - to say, quite airily... 'Time is what you make it.''
He turned his head to her in the darkness. He waited.
There was no response from Irma. She was thinking feverishly. She began to panic. Her face was prickling with anxiety. She could make no sound. Then she had an idea. She pressed herself against him a little more closely.
'How delicious!' she said at last, but her voice was very strained.
The silence that followed was no more than a few seconds, but to Irma it was as long as that ghastly hush that awaits all sinners when, at the judgement seat, they wait the Verdict. Her body trembled, for there was so much at stake. Had she said something so stupid, that no headmaster, worthy of his office, could ever consider accepting her? Had she unwittingly lifted some hatchway of her brain and revealed to this brilliant man how cold, black, humourless and sterile was the region that lay within?
No. Ah no! For his voice, rolling from the gloom, had, if possible, even more tenderness in it than she would have dared to hope for in a man.
'You are cold, my love. You are chilly. The night is not for delicate skins. By hell, it isn't. And I? And what of me? Your suitor? Is he cold also, my dear? Your old gallant? He is. He is indeed. And what is more he is becoming sick of darkness. Darkness that shrouds. That clogs the living lineaments of beauty. That swathes you, Irma. By hell it's maddening and pointless stuff...'
Bellgrove began to rise... 'it's damnable, I tell you, my own, this arbour's damnable.'
He felt the pressure of fingers on his forearm.
'Ah no... no I will not have you swear. I will not have strong language in our arbour our sacred arbour.'
For a moment Bellgrove was tempted to play the gay dog. His moods flitted across the basic excitement of the wooing. It was so delicious to be chided by a woman. He wondered whether to shock her - to shock her out of the surplus of his love, would be worth the candle. To taste again the sweetness of being reprimanded, the never-before-experienced gushes of sham remorse - would this be worth the lowering of his moral status. No! He would stick to his pinnacle.
'This arbour,' he said, 'is forever ours. It is the darkness it holds captive; this pitchy stuff that hides your face from me - it is this darkness that I called damnable - and damnable it is. It is your face, Irma, your proud face that I am thirsting for. Can you not understand? By the great moonlight! my love; by the tremendous moonlight! Is it not natural that a man should wish to brood upon his darling's brow?'
The word 'darling' affected Irma as might a bullet wound. She clasped her hands at her breast and pressing them inwards the tepid water in her false bosom gurgled in the darkness.
For a moment Bellgrove, thinking she was laughing at what he had said, stiffened at her side. But the terrible blush of humiliation that was about to climb his neck was quenched by Irma's voice. The gurgle must have been a sign of love, of some strange and aqueous love that was beyond his sounding, for 'O master,' she
