'You got my letter at Alexandria?' she interrupted his reflections. He thanked her with enthusiasm, trying to remember what it said—but without success. It struck him suddenly that there was very little in it after all, and he mentioned this with a reproachful smile. 'That's my restraint,' she replied. 'You always liked restraint. Besides, I wasn't sure it would reach you.' She laughed and blew a kiss towards him. She made a curious gesture he had never seen her make before. It seemed unlike her. More and more he registered a difference in her, as if side by side with the increase of spontaneous vitality there ran another mood, another aspect, almost another point of view. It was not towards him, yet it affected him. There seemed a certain new lightness, even irresponsibility in her; she was more worldly, more human, not more ordinary by any means, but less 'impersonal.' He remembered her singular words: 'It enflames the heart.' He wondered—a little uneasily. There seemed a new touch of wonder about her that made him aware of something commonplace, almost inferior, in himself.…
At the same time he felt another thing—a breath of coldness touched him somewhere, though he could not trace its origin to anything she did or said. Was it perhaps in what she left unsaid, undone? He longed to hear her confess how she had missed him, how thrilled she was that he had come: but she did not say these passionately desired things, and when he teased her about it, she showed a slight impatience almost: 'Tom, you know I never talk like that. Anything sentimental I abhor. But I live it. Can't you see?' His ungenerous fancies vanished then at once; at a word, a smile, a glance of the expressive eyes, he instantly forgot all else.
'But I am different in Egypt,' she warned him playfully again, half closing her eyelids as she said it. 'I wonder if you'll like me—quite as well.'
'More,' he replied ardently, 'a thousand times more. I feel it already. There's mischief in you,' he went on watching the half-closed eyes, 'a touch of magic too, but very human magic. I love it.' And then he whispered, 'I think you're more within my reach.'
'Am I?' She looked bewitching, a being of light and air.
'Everybody will fall in love with you at sight.' He laughed happily, aware of an enchantment that fascinated him more and more, but when he suddenly went over to her chair, she stopped him with decision. 'Don't, Tom, please don't. Tony'll be here any minute now. It would be unpleasant if he saw you behaving wildly like this! He wouldn't understand.'
He drew back. 'Oh, Tony's coming—then I must be careful!' He laughed, but he was disappointed and he showed it: it was their first day together, and eager though he was to see his cousin, he felt it might well have been postponed a little. He said so.
'One must be natural, Tom,' she told him in reply; 'it's always the best way. This isn't London or Montreux, you see, and——'
'Lettice, I understand,' he interrupted, a trifle ashamed of himself. 'You're quite right.' He tried to look pleased and satisfied, but the truth was he felt suddenly—stupid. 'And we've got lots of time—three months or more ahead of us, haven't we?' She gave him an expressive, tender look with which he had to be contented for the moment.
'And by the by, how is old Tony, and who is his latest?' he enquired carelessly.