“As often as you feel like it; but don’t force feeling.”
“May I describe châteaux and churches? And will you read my descriptions if I do?”
“With pleasure—and profit. Let me know, too, how the book gets on. Can I do anything for you at the British Museum?”
It struck Katherine that the change in their relation which she now contemplated as very probably definite might well allow of a return to the first phase of their companionship. A letter from Allan Hope which she had received that morning, though satisfactory in many respects, was not quite so from an intellectual standpoint. An intellectual friendship with Peter Odd was a pleasant possession for any woman, and Katherine perhaps, with an excusable malice, rather anticipated the time when Peter might have regrets, and find in that friendship the solace of certain disappointments from which Katherine had almost decided not to withhold him.
“I shall try to keep you profitably yoked, then, even in London, shall I?” said Odd, in reply to an offer more generous than he could have divined. “Discipline is good for a rebellious spirit like yours. Don’t be frightened, Kathy. Go and look at the Elgin Marbles if you like. I shall set you no heavier task.”
“They are so profoundly melancholy in their cellared respectable abode, poor dears! I know they would have preferred dropping to pieces under a Greek sky. A cruel kindness to preserve them in an insulting immortality. The frieze especially, stretched round the ugly wall like a butterfly under a glass case!” Odd laughed with more light-heartedness than he had felt for some time. It rejoiced him to feel that he still found Katherine charming. There must certainly be safety in that affectionate admiration.
“I won’t even ask you to harrow your susceptibility by a look at the insulted frieze, then; you must know it well, to enter with such sympathy into its feelings. Only you must write, Katherine. I shall be lonely down there. A daily letter would be none too many.”
“I can’t quite see why you are exiling yourself. Of course, the weather here is nasty just now. I have noticed your cough all the evening. Come and say good-bye to-morrow. I shall be very busy, so fix your hour.”
“Our usual hour? In the morning?”
“You will not see Hilda then.”