He had understood about Edith before, about her irritation at him. He had seen it now. It became a little more real, a final turn of the screw had come to drive home what he knew. Of course, he had been asleep. But what did that matter? Truth and falsehood are in dreams, just as truth and falsehood are in waking hours. The truth may come through either; falsehood may come through either.
But the dream anyhow had banished the terrible companion that just now had sat on the pine-tree close to him, which for days and days had been that which made solitude lonely. It was Doubt; that at last was the name of the dog. He had never seen it, he had only imagined its presence. He had been afraid—the indefensible emotion, as Edith had once said to him. That and anger; there was no excuse for them.
But now he had seen or dreamed something that said he was her soul and her heart. Wonderful though it was, perhaps, indeed, because it was wonderful, it seemed incontestably true.
The path was steep, he ran and slipped down it, to be back at the hour for lunch.
“Yes, if you ask me,” said Hugh, half an hour later, “I won’t deceive you. I have been sitting in a pine-wood, and I never want to do anything nicer.”
It was a bad morning with Edith. She, too, had slept ill; she had heard from the doctor that she was not getting on. She had heard, too, something that she had not told Hugh, something that she had made the doctor promise not to tell him. And illness, weakness, fatigue combined together. Instead of saying, “Oh, how nice, do let us go there this afternoon,” she said—
“What a pity you did not take your lunch with you. Then you need not have come back here.”
Hugh contrasted the difference. If only she had said “we” instead of “you!” The non-existent wall rose swift and high between them. And he had to play his rôle of cheerful insouciance.
“In which case,” he said, “I should not be lunching now with you. I like lunching with you, do you know?”
He caught her eye for a moment, and the soul behind it yearned toward him. But the devil, the insects, were potent.