Grey-gowned, grey-eyed, white-faced, he thought she was like a moth herself, fragile and impalpable in the gloom, a moth motionless on a flower, and when he saw her smile he thought the moth was making ready for flight.
"I want this to go on for ever," she said. "The moor and the night and you. You're such a friend—you and the Pinderwells. I don't know how I should live without you."
"Do you know what you're saying to me?"
"I'm telling you I like you, and it's true. And you like me. It's so comfortable to know that."
"Comfortable!"
"Isn't it?"
"Comfortable?" he said again. "Oh, my love—" He broke off, and looking at each other, both fell dumb.
He got to his feet and looked down with an expression which was strange to her, for into that moment of avowal there had come a fleeting antagonism towards the woman who, in spite of all her gifts to him, had taken his possession of himself: yet through his shamed resentment, he knew that he adored her.
"Zebedee," she said in a broken voice. "Oh, isn't it a funny name! Zebedee, don't look at me like that."
"How shall I look at you?" he asked, not clearly.