"He doesn't have to. He'd be all right if he did. Sweat some of that beef off him, give him something to think about," averred his cousin, carelessly knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe. "But, you know, my place is in Camden Town; most inferior. Three rooms over a paper shop; two small cubby-holes where I sleep and eat, and a rather bigger one where I keep the 'P.D.Q.' stuff. I couldn't have you there that Sunday."
"Why not?" Gwenna asked sharply, and jealous again. It was almost as if the Fiancée had said to him, "No, not here!"
"Because," he said with a chuckle, "because at the last moment, when I'd got the tea ready and everything"—he tossed his fair head back—"a fall of soot down the chimney! Everything in the most ghastly mess! Pitch black wherever you put a finger. I simply couldn't—it was four o'clock then; I expect you both thought it rotten of me. Still," he concluded, rather ruefully, "I couldn't give you the sort of polite tea Hugo can, anyhow."
"I don't want polite teas!" Gwenna protested, looking round at the field where she had feasted as if in Elysium. "You don't suppose I care for things all grand like that, do you?"
He responded, "Would you care to see my Camden Town place, then, and the model? You and Miss Long. It's quite near you, you know."
"Yes, I should," said Gwenna quietly, stripping her grass.
How could he, she wondered, ask if she "cared" for these things that opened out new worlds to her? If he only knew, just to be with him was part of that new, soaring freedom which to her was summed up in the idea of flying! This, she felt, was flying. She didn't care, after all, if there were no other flying that afternoon. Care? She wouldn't mind sitting there until the sun slipped slowly downwards towards the western hedge and the moon-daisies closed in the tall grass, and clouds of other tiny flying creatures poised and hovered above them. She wasn't sorry that the mechanic did not return in haste to minister to that broken-down car. When she did remember about it, it was almost to hope that he would not be back! Not just yet! Not to put an end to this golden afternoon of talk that, trivial as it was, seemed to her to be the endowment of a new faculty, and of comradeship that was as beguiling and satisfying as that of her bosom-chum, Leslie. Only newer, only more complete. So it seemed to Gwenna, as the shadows moved further up the grass where she sat with her new boy-friend.
For it is a commonplace that in all comradeship between man and woman passionate love claims a share. But also in all passionate love there is more comradeship than the unimaginative choose to admit; there is a happy inner meaning to the cottage phrase, "To keep company with."
What he thought about it she did not know. Except that he surely must like talking to her? He could not go on like this out of politeness.
Ah, besides—! Besides, she knew, without reasoning about it, that, even with that absorbing interest of the aeroplane in the background, he did like her. Just as Leslie, her other friend, who also knew so much more than she did, had liked her at once.