Guy went up the companion and asked Margaret if she were particularly anxious to be alone. She seemed to pull herself from a day-dream as she turned to assure him she did not at all particularly want to be alone. Guy announced his good news, and Margaret offered him her slim hand with a kind of pathetic grace that moved him very much.
"I think you deserve it," she said, "for you've both been so sweet to me all this fortnight. I expect you think I don't notice, but I do ... always."
"Margaret," said Guy, "if this Summer Pauline and I have seemed to run away from people...."
"Oh, but you have!" Margaret interrupted. "I don't think I should find excuses, if I were you, for perhaps it's natural."
"I've fancied very often," he said, "that you've thought we were behaving selfishly."
"I think all lovers are selfish," she answered. "Only in your case you began in such an idyllic way that I thought you were going to be a wonderful exception. Guy, I do most dreadfully want you not to spoil in any way the perfectly beautiful thing that Pauline and you in love is. You won't, will you?"
"Have I yet?" asked Guy in a rather dismayed voice.
"Do you want me to be frank? Yes, of course you do, and anyway I must be frank," said Margaret. "Well, sometimes you have— I don't mean in wanting always to be alone or in asking her in to Plashers Mead to say good night. No, I don't mean in those ways so much. Of course they make me feel a little sad, but smaller things than that make me more uneasy."
"You mean," said Guy, as she paused, "my staying on here and apparently doing nothing? But, Margaret, really I can't leave Pauline to be a schoolmaster, and surely you of all people can understand that?"
"Oh no, I wasn't thinking of that," said Margaret. "I think, in fact, you're right to stay here and keep at what you're trying to do. If it was ever worth doing, it must be doubly worth doing now. Oh no, the only criticism I shall make is of something so small that you'll wonder how I can think it even worth mentioning. Guy, you know the photograph of Pauline which Mother used to have and which she gave to you?"