Maurice, as was often the case, was half-charmed into taking her at her own valuation, as all candour, all sweetness, and, guessing at the further feelings underlying the frankness, he felt it peculiarly generous. After all, there was something coarse and petty in caution. She claimed nothing; why imply that she did by any reticence on his part? How ugly such a reticence would be!
“Will you inspire the book too? It’s my only chance for greatness,” he asked, smiling.
“Who knows? Perhaps I may.” Her answering smile was even lighter than his own. “But it can’t be consciously. You must find; I can’t give.” She got up and walked to the fire, displaying a back flowing with faultless lines from the sloping shoulders, their fragile, exaggerated grace, to the curve of the long, lace train. Angela was intellectually ensconced in mountain fastnesses, where any appeal not purely spiritual was stonily regarded, but her very beautiful body was as keenly conscious of itself, of its every pose and movement, as that of the crudest coquette. Angela’s coquetry was not crude; it wound itself through her mental attitude as pervasively, but as delicately, as the narrow black ribbons curved through the laces of her dress. It now said, “Look at me; follow me,” and Maurice, after the startled moment where he surveyed that queer little speech as to his finding and her not giving—was it a very clever, a very courageous, a very pathetic speech?—looked at her, and followed, joined her at the fireplace, and as her hand rested on the mantelpiece he put his, in an impulse he was hardly conscious of, lightly upon it.
Angela said nothing, but she lifted her appealing eyes to him.
“If I could paint you so!” said Maurice, removing his hand and wondering at himself. He did not go further than this, but the things that she might well have expected him to say after it made him uncomfortable.
Angela felt more than discomfort; it was a real anguish of baffled hope. Yet she was almost sure, now, that he would go further.
And by imperceptible degrees, during the mornings that followed in the music-room, he did.
He definitely determined nothing; the facts of life seemed to bear him towards a definition over which his will had no control. There was the past, the golden haze, the sweet golden haze, and sweet Felicia; but the self that had wandered into it with her already seemed illusory. The present self, its crushing necessities, its really tempting escape from them, was too vivid a reality to make memory of much avail.
Felicia had charmed him more deeply than Angela could ever charm; yet, since the self which had so truly loved her was already dim, unseizable, Angela’s half real, half artificial attraction counted for more than the dear impossible past.
The passionate sadness of the letters he sent to Felicia was sincere, for in writing to her he caught together all his memories, and they pressed on his heart with a great weight of regret. He wrote of hope deferred, of possible hopelessness, feeling courageous, and avoiding the worst pang of all—that dread of playing an ugly part in Felicia’s eyes—that dread of her seeing cowardice instead of courage—by telling himself that finally to renounce her would show the truest love for her. From these crises of almost despair he drifted on to a long silence, a kind silence surely, from which she must draw her own conclusions. She would of course take time in doing so, give him the benefit—poor darling!—of every doubt, and if, at the last moment, anything did turn up he could still claim her and explain the impossibility of writing when there was only despair to write of.