“Yes, that’s quite true. We always are angry with others when we’ve been mistaken in them or have injured them,” she said.
Colin suddenly registered the fact that he hated her. The knowledge seemed to spring from no particular source; it was blown to him perhaps on this evening breeze. In consequence he exerted himself to charm and attract her, for that was the path that led to the completest outrage and humiliation for her. He hated her passion for him, and therefore inflamed it, so that she would pay the more for it.
“I don’t believe you ever wanted to injure anybody,” he said. “You’ve got the most adorable nature, do you know?”
“My dear, how about compliments?” she asked. “Great friends don’t pay each other compliments, you told me.”
“Well, I wanted to let you know that I had noticed it. Leave it at that.... Ah, look; the loveliest light of all is beginning. Just before sunset sea and sky and land all get inside an opal. The hard wearisome brilliance of the afternoon fades, and you have ten minutes of pure fairyland. Everything is unreal and exquisite: you can hardly believe in the beauty of it. I could almost jump over the cliff myself for the sheer joy of falling, free and unfettered, through the air. One is too much anchored when one is on land. Swimming you get some feeling of being unattached to anything, but think if one was falling, falling through the air. And what does it matter if there’s death at the end? One would have had a perfect moment. Fancy being happy, though only for a few seconds!”
He sat with knees drawn up to his chin, looking outwards over the bright gulf of air, below which the sea lay blue and unflecked, and he heard her take a quick breath as she looked at him. Then, turning, he saw the fire in her eyes so nearly breaking into flame.
“Fairyland!” he said. “And you look a real native of it, Pamela.... My dear, ‘real native’! It sounds as if I were calling you a Whitstable oyster. And then, as one fairyland fades—look, it’s going quickly—another, the fairyland of night, begins. I could sit here, at least so I believe this moment, all night with you, watching the stars wheel, and fancying I could hear the rustle of the world as it span through space, until it came out of the tunnel of the night into morning again. But you would have to be close by me. I couldn’t do it alone; I should get self-conscious, and that’s the ruin of magic. My dear, how bored you would get before sunrise.”
He saw the fire begin to leap in her eyes, and he did not want it to burst out yet. There must be some greater abasement for her than his mere solitary derision, if he let her now say what was trembling on her lips, or if under the impulse she could barely resist she clasped and clung to him. That fire must be damped down for the present: the core of it would only grow the hotter for that.... He laughed and went on without pause.
“What dreadful positions I put you in,” he said. “You are almost bound to say that you would be delighted to stay here all night with me, and your tongue would be blistered for that thumping lie. How bored you would be before morning! I shall get Nino to come instead: poor Nino, he would have to do as he was told, and I shouldn’t care how bored he was. Or your maid, perhaps she would come, or Nino’s stepmother. But a companion would be necessary: just somebody, just anybody.”
She got up, stung to the quick, but Colin was quite undismayed. The fire burned all right, that blast of cold air only made the core of it turn white-hot, as the surface of it for the moment ceased to glow. Perhaps she was going to sulk again.... But apparently she had not found that of any use: instead, after that one moment of averted face, she laughed.