“No, no,” Felicia protested.
“No, no, indeed. Lady Angela doesn’t know me as well as you do—in spite of your nipping reference to five days—and for the simple reason that she doesn’t know herself; that inner blindness blurs all one’s outer vision, you know. I am fond of her, really fond of her—she is, on the whole, a very good sort. But she seldom means what she thinks she means—and that’s so disconcerting. Now you always mean just what you intend to mean.”
The memory of Aunt Kate’s grunt, dimmed already, was effaced by this frank analysis of his relation with Angela. Felicia hardly knew how deep was her own relief, but only glad that she was wresting no possession from anybody. When she came in after the subsequent talk, glancing and desultory as it had superficially seemed, her perturbation was of a new order. It was as if he had walked in upon her own particular garden—finding, during her momentary confusion, its gate ajar—had made its paths his own and, as it almost seemed, smoked a cigarette among its roses. Yet, with the perturbation, there was something perversely pleasing in the delicate desecration.
This alien fragrance flattered and fluttered her. She was becoming very intimate with Maurice Wynne, certainly not against her will, yet not altogether with it. Her will did not seem to count. It was such a new thing for her to talk about herself with somebody, her instinct was to hide behind her hedges; but Maurice found her every time, and she felt delight at being found. It seemed inevitable that she should like him, should know that he liked her, and tell him anything he asked.
And Felicia was becoming aware that there might be something more than liking. She looked quickly away from the suggestion, yet it charmed, intoxicated her a little to feel her power over this sympathetic young man. She could not pause to ask herself whether he embodied her ideals, whether, fundamentally, his meaning chimed with hers. His meaning seemed all in his smile, his understanding; and his shaft of real light, strong and sunny, made ideals pale, ineffectual. Life itself was hurrying her on and there was no time to pause, to analyze, to weigh her heart. She only surely knew that she was perplexed, happy, fascinated and a little frightened. If this were the fairy-prince he was not the grave one she had imagined, and if he were not the fairy-prince she would not in the least break her heart over it. No depths were touched; yet the heart might ache at the loss of the dear companion.
Meanwhile, his feeling for her made of all life a new and vivid thing.
CHAPTER X
THERE must be no more evasions. Felicia must see how much she counted with him, must recognize him as her champion, though championship might endanger more than he could allow her to guess. He didn’t much care what it endangered. To shut out the future and keep the present moment golden was Maurice’s philosophy.
He found Felicia in the library next morning, sitting high on the library steps, a pile of dusty volumes on her knees. Mr. Merrick was meditating an article on credulity and had asked her to find for him the eighteenth-century deists, for whom she had looked through rows of long undisturbed volumes. Felicia smiled somewhat grimly as she clapped together the covers of Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury. Her father’s articles rarely got beyond this initial stage of the accumulation of material. German idealism had been abandoned. “Why attack these castles of sand?” said Mr. Merrick.
From dust and the arid pages through which she glanced she looked down at Maurice.