“I told you that night when you listened and took it all. I don’t think I can say it again.”
“No, but you’re not to misunderstand me, and you mustn’t go on giving and getting nothing back.”
“That’s just what I can do. Not many people could, but I can. Perhaps it’s the only way I can be great, like an artist giving his work to a world that doesn’t care.”
The quick sense she had to serve her instead of knowledge and to make her unconsciously subtle, detected his danger in the words and some lack of homage to herself. “Ah, you’re pretending, and you’re enjoying it,” she said. “It’s consoling you for not being able to do anything else.”
“Who said I couldn’t do anything else?”
“Well, you nearly did, and I don’t suppose you can. If you could, you wouldn’t bother about me.”
He was silent and though she did not look at him she was very keenly aware of his tall figure wrapped in an overcoat reaching almost to his heels and with the big parcel under his left arm. He was always slightly absurd and now, when he struck the top bar of the railing with his left hand and uttered a mournful, “Yes, it’s true!” the tragedy in his tone could not repress her smile. Yet if he had been less funny he might have been less truly tragic.
“So, you see, I’m only a kind of makeshift,” she remarked.
“No,” he said, “but I may have been mistaken in myself. I’m not mistaken about you. Never!” he cried, striking the rail again.
They were alone on the hill, but suddenly, with a clatter of wings, a bird left his nest in the rocks and swept out of sight, leaving a memory of swiftness and life, of an intenser blackness in the gulf. Far below them, to the left, there were lights, stationary and moving, and sometimes the clang of a tramcar bell reached them with its harsh music: the slim line of the bridge, with here and there a dimly burning light, was like a spangled thread. The sound of footsteps and voices came to them from the road behind the hill.