“To-day you are not to escape me,” he declared. “I claim all to-day. You will practise?”
“I will. Why do you say I escape you?” She had to smile at his acuteness.
“Since the other day—in the garden—you have. Angela irritated you, Geoffrey irritated you, and I was included in the irritation. Isn’t it a little true?” He leaned against her steps, answering her smile.
“Perhaps a little,” Felicia owned. “I felt, perhaps, rather out of it.”
“So you are—out of it, with me.” His words were light, too, but she felt the underlying emphasis. “You see we feel things in the same way, see them in the same way; that sets us apart. It was unkind of you to bar me away from you—even for a day or two—and two days is a frightfully long time in a mere week.” His voice lifted itself from the almost gravity to which it had sunken; happily and sweetly, differences looked at and effaced, he went on. “I’ve something here I want you to see and feel with me.” He showed her the volume he held, Maeterlinck—delightful dreamer.
“At first he had nightmares, but now his dreams are sane; that’s an unusual quality for dreams. They seemed dreamed in sunlight, too, rather than in darkness.”
“This isn’t nightmare, but it’s not a sunny dream either. Sad dawn perhaps—or perhaps twilight; you must say.”
“I saw Mr. Daunt pass outside just then. He always spends the morning here. Shall we read it somewhere else?”
“Ah—let Geoffrey share it. I should rather like to see how Geoffrey would take it.” Maurice was reflecting that read to her alone the twilight dream might carry him too far. “You dislike him? Really?”
“Frankly, I don’t like him—but I don’t want to exclude him from the reading. We are hostile elements, you see. Anything so self-assured makes me feel frivolous, and yet, I do see something admirable in him. He was walking on the lawn, in the moonlight, last night, and he made me think, strange as it may seem, of Sir Galahad.”