‘Mothers be damned,’ said Christopher.
‘Oh, that’s what I’ve been thinking all the week!’ cried Catherine,—and then looked so much shocked at herself that Christopher burst out laughing, and so, after a minute, did she, and they stood there laughing, he holding both her hands, and happiness coming back to them in waves.
‘Aren’t we friends,’ she said, looking at him in a kind of glad surprise.
‘Aren’t we,’ said Christopher, kissing her hands again.
They wandered along the sands for a little after that, after their simultaneous laughter had loosened them from their reserves and fears, both feeling that an immense stride had been made in intimacy. Catherine, as they wandered, expounded her view of the nature and manifestations of true friendship, as other women have done on similar occasions, and Christopher, even as other men on such occasions, pretended that he thought just like that too.
He wasn’t going to frighten her away again. She had been flung back to him in this unexpected frame of mind, this state of relief and gladness, because it happened that Stephen was Stephen and Virginia was Virginia,—but suppose she had chanced to run to appreciative friends, friends delighted to have her, who petted her and made her happy, to the enthusiastic Fanshawes, for instance, he would have had a poor hope of anything but being avoided for the rest of his life. And he had suffered, suffered. It had been the blackest week of misery. He wasn’t going to risk any more of it. He would walk along the sands with her and talk carefully with her of friendship.
And Catherine, used only to George, and without experience of the endless variety of the approaches and disguises of love, was delighted with Christopher, and felt every minute more reassured and safe. He agreed, it appeared, completely with her that in a world where nobody can get everything it is better to take something rather than have nothing, and that friendship between a man and a woman, even a warm one, is perfectly possible,—only reverting to his more violent way of speech when she added, ‘Especially at our unequal ages,’ upon which he said, in his earlier manner, ‘Oh, damn unequal ages.’
For a moment he had difficulty in not holding forth on this subject, and her ridiculous obsession by it, but stopped himself. He wasn’t going to spoil this. It was too happy, this wandering alone together on those blessed solitary sands,—too, too happy, after the dark torments of the week, to risk spoiling it. Let her say what she liked. Let her coo away about being friends; in another moment she would probably assure him that she would like to be his sister, his own dear sister, or his mother to whom he could always turn in trouble, or some absurd female relation of that sort. He wouldn’t stop her. He would only listen and laugh inside himself. His Catherine. His love. As sure as she walked there, as sure as there behind her, reaching farther and farther back, was a double ribbon of her little wobbly footprints in the sand, she was his love. And presently she too would know it, and all the sister and mother and friend talk go the way such talk always went, and be remembered some day only with wonder and smiles.
‘Catherine,’ he said, ‘just to walk with you makes me so happy that it’s as clear as God’s daylight we’re the wonderfullest, most harmonious of friends.’
The relief of being with Christopher! To be wanted again, to have some one pleased to be with her, preferring to be with her than anywhere else in the world,—what a contrast to her recent experiences at Chickover. She no longer had the amused feeling of gratified vanity that had warmed her in London before he began to behave badly; what she felt now was much simpler and more sincere,—not trivial like that. They had both been through their rages, and had come out into this fresh air, these sunlit waters. They were friends.