Had she shared his hours of remembering? Had it really been her thoughts that had touched him in that little room in Eden Row? He stooped his head nearer to listen. It seemed to him that, above the throbbing of the engine, he could hear the blood dripping in his heart.
She stared into his eyes with her old suspicion—the veiled stare, half hostile, which a girl gives a man when she fears that he is going to kiss her.
“Girls look forward to—what kind of things?” she echoed. “I can’t tell. The same kind of things that men look forward to, I expect. The surprise things, and—yes, the excitements, most of all.”
“Like our meeting—it was a surprise thing, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” She slipped back her cloak from her white shoulders. “Heaps of things are surprise things like that.”
It was as though she had said, “This meeting of ours—it’s of no importance.” He loved her for the way she was treating him. He knew now why she had dared to risk herself with a man who, so far as her knowledge went, was a complete stranger.
They both fell silent. He felt that there was only one thing that he could talk about, and he didn’t know when or where to start. He wanted above all things to say nothing only to take her in his arms; to kiss her lips, her hair, her hands and to kneel to the little sandaled feet that peeped out from below her queenly robe. He hardly dared to look at her lest, then and there, he should leave the wheel and do it. All that his heart asked was to be allowed to touch and reverence her.
As he stared between the rushing eyes of the car, watching the road ahead, his imagination painted pictures on the darkness. He saw her lifting her arms about his neck. He saw her lying close against his breast. He heard her whispering broken phrases—words which said so much by leaving so much unsaid. But whenever he stole a glance at her, he saw her gray eyes closed like a statue’s and her white hands folded.
He was wasting time—it would so soon be morning. She was going to America. She must not go, and yet he was helping her. If he could only find words to tell her. He had never thought it would be so difficult. Ah, but then he had imagined a child-Desire, just grown a little taller. But this Desire was different—so self-possessed and calm, with so many new interests and unknown friends estranging her from the faery-Desire of the farmhouse garden.
They passed through Wells, where the cathedral lay like a gigantic coffin beneath the stars. Having panted up the steep ascent beyond the town, they commenced the twenty-mile downhill run to Bath.