“I would choose to do nothing.”
“If you had the choice of all the people in the world, would you choose me?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Lily, you make me curiously lazy. I want never again to do anything but sit in the sun with you. Why can’t we stay like this for ever?”
“I shouldn’t mind.”
“I wish that you could be turned into a primrose, and that I could be turned into a hazel-bush looking down at you for ever. Or I wish you could be a cowslip and I could be a plume of grass. Lily, why is it that the longer I know you, the less you say?”
“You talk enough for both,” said Lily.
“I talk less to you than to anyone. I really only want to look at you, you lovely thing.”
But the Easter holidays were almost over, and Michael had to go to Oxford for his Matriculation. On their last long day together, Lily and he went to Hampton Court and dreamed the sad time away. When twilight was falling Michael said he had a sovereign to spend on whatever they liked best to do. Why should they not have dinner on a balcony over the river, and after dinner drive all the way home in a hansom cab?
So they sat grandly on the chilly balcony and had dinner, until Lily in her thin frock was cold.