So that was love.
She felt ashamed and almost angry at the thought of her own secret, past dreams. Romantic, indeed. Miss Melody and Cousin Ethel, extremely unlike as they were, would most certainly have joined issue in kindly condemnation here. Both would alike have made use of the self-same words. Beware, foolish little child, of romance and of imagination alike.
Love was a thing of ephemeral excitements, greatly accrued self-importance, preparations, gifts, congratulations, a great deal of talk and discussion.
It was also a thing of rather bewildering demands and claims. Nicholas had the right to hold her hand now whenever he wanted to, and he always did so whenever they were alone together, playing with her engagement-ring, bending back the supple fingers, examining the tips of them, very often kissing them. He put his arm round her when they were together, frequently. He kissed her lips at each meeting and parting—sometimes he unexpectedly bent and touched her cheek or her forehead.
It had been a relief to Lily to find that his touch did not actually displease her, as did that of most people.
She was by temperament, she supposed, undemonstrative, but it disappointed her vaguely that certain latent possibilities in herself had not in any way been roused by Nicholas. She wished that there was anyone to whom she could turn for explanation.
But of course everybody would make the same humiliating accusation, and inform her regretfully that she was romantic. These wild, sweet dreams had been romantic, undoubtedly.
She had thought of love as a thing of flames and carnations—the odd, beautiful words had served her fancy instinctively. Something so wonderful that talk would spoil it. Or if there had to be talk and discussion and preparation, it would all pass by unheeded, because of something that mattered so infinitely more.
She had a curious idea that one would not care to have a wedding, and a beautiful lace veil, and all those presents. It would be more like an inevitable recognition of a great central fact in the whole universe, and then—what?
She hardly knew, but could formulate vaguely the picture of a going forth. The soft, dark-blue gloom of a summer night, and the trusted, hidden depths of a known and loved beech-wood, or the lashing wind of a grey, winter sky and the shelter of a flung cloak and the lee of a high boulder—what would it matter, which the setting were?