“He does,” said Philip drily.
Colin took Violet’s letter down to the beach with him, and after a short dip of refreshment from his dusty walk, came out cool and shining from the sea to dispose himself on the beach that quivered in the hot sun, and ponder over it. He read it again twice through, stirring it into his brains and his emotions, till it seemed to form part of him....
So Raymond had proposed to her, and, having asked for a week’s delay in her answer, she, while the matter was still private, had to tell Colin that, as far as she knew her own intentions, she was meaning to accept him. And yet this letter in which she said that she was going to marry his brother, seemed hardly less than a love-letter to himself.
She appeared to remember that last evening at Stanier when, under the moon-cast shadow of the yews, she had given him the kiss he asked for, just as vividly as did Colin. It was vivid to him because he had asked for that with a definite calculated end in view, and with the same end in view he had exclaimed how maddening it was to think that Raymond would kiss her next. No doubt Raymond had done so, and Violet, though she said she meant to marry him, had, perhaps, begun to know something more of her own heart. That was why the evening was vivid to her, exactly as he had intended it should be. She had learned that there was a difference between him and Raymond, which being mistress at Stanier might counterbalance, but did not cancel.
The wetness had dried from Colin’s sun-tanned shoulders, and, lying down at length on the beach, he drew from his pocket Violet’s letter in order to study one passage again which had puzzled him. Here it was:
“You were perfectly brutal to Raymond that evening,” she wrote, “and he was admirable in his answer to your rudeness. If we are to remain friends you must not behave to him like that. You don’t like each other, but he, at any rate now, has control over himself, and you must copy his example.”
(“Lord! me copying Raymond’s example,” thought Colin to himself, in an ecstatic parenthesis.)
“I shall always do my best to make peace between you, for I am very fond of you, but Raymond’s side will in the future be mine. You were nice to me afterwards, but, dear Colin, you mustn’t ask me to kiss you again. Raymond wouldn’t like it....”
With this perusal all that was puzzling vanished. “That’s not genuine; none of that’s genuine,” thought Colin. “She says what she’s trying to feel, what she thinks she ought to feel, and doesn’t feel.” He turned the page.
“I hope my news won’t hurt you,” she went on. “After all, we’ve settled often enough that we weren’t in love with each other, and so when that night you said it was maddening to think of Raymond kissing me next, it couldn’t make any difference to you as you aren’t in love with me....”