He called her Benedicta, and his voice—
“Yes,” she answered, very low.
“Benedicta,” he said again, “I can’t say what I want to say to you just now—not yet; but if I thought—I could do anything in the world if it was for you!”
It was necessarily a very long walk, with so much to be said. Benedicta came home with a hole walked through one of her best slippers; but she had heard the important things necessary for her to know. She had heard exactly why he felt that way, and at what instant he had begun to feel that way. She had given him permission to go ahead and do anything in the world for her; and he had kissed her—an awkward little kiss—when they said good night at the gate.
VI
Benedicta awoke to a rainy morning, but it was not the sort of rain that had hitherto fallen upon the earth. It was sweet, fresh, exhilarating. The sound of it drumming on the roof was as gay as martial music.
All the old wearisome things were gone out of her life, and the new ones had scarcely begun. She felt wonderfully free and spirited, like a person on a journey who has got as far as the railway station—who is definitely away from home, but still in familiar country.
She was thinking of nothing but Francis Dumall, the knight, the adventurer, the man determined to do something worth doing. She could imagine nothing in the modern world quite splendid enough for him to do. It was brave to be an aviator, but it wasn’t important enough. A statesman? Not picturesque enough. A writer? Not sufficiently active or daring.
“But he’ll have thought of something,” she reflected. “I know he has his life all planned. I wonder why I didn’t ask him about that, instead of about—other things. It’s because I’m frivolous and silly!”
Even that didn’t depress her. She was so full of hope and courage this morning that it seemed the simplest thing in the world to acquire wisdom at once. She in[Pg 136]tended to buy and read a new book this very day, so that she might talk about it to the incomparable Francis in the evening; and this not from any desire to show off, or to impress him, but simply from an honest and touching wish to follow him, to go at his pace, to prove her sympathy with his aims.