“Object to Odette Charrier?” he cried, almost as loudly as Theo might have done.
And, staring up at him, I saw that the set mask of his face had broken up into its broadest, most boyish smile. His eyes were full of laughter and delight....
Ah! How she must hold him, I thought, for her very name so to irradiate him in a moment!
“That,” he said, with the laughter running through his voice,“was so utterly different.”
“Ah, yes! It’s always ‘different’ in one’s own case. You and another girl can do as you choose—but you wouldn’t have allowed an inch to me and another man—you mustn’t be compromised. Well, you should know your own side of it. All that, I suppose, is what you can’t tell me.”
“Exactly!” he said again, and all the smile went out of his face. “This dashed tangle!”
“But considering it’s all at an end now,” I said reasonably enough, “why need we go on talking about it?” And then I found that I was holding my breath in suspense.
Terrified suspense lest he should take me at my word....
I knew then. I knew why I felt so. If we could only “go on”! I asked for nothing more.
More clearly with each minute, these hours had been showing me one thing at least. Whatever he chose to say, however he rated me, dictated to me what I should or should not have done—to listen to his voice was pure joy. Just to be—in Battersea, Anglesey, anywhere!—the sea itself, but with him, was like coming out of a stifling tunnel into sunshine and air.