How old she had been then compared to now! She laughed up at Christopher, who was leading her very fast by the elbow along wet paths shining in the sun, where the earth and grass smelt so good after London, out to lawns flung over with their little lovely coat of spring, their blue and gold and purple embroidered coat; and he laughed back at her, not asking why she laughed, nor knowing why he laughed, except that this was bliss.
The times that Christopher on this occasion managed not to seize her in his arms and tell her how frantically he loved her were not to be counted. He began counting them, but had to leave off, there were so many. His self-control amazed him. True he was terrified of offending her, but his terror was as nothing compared to his love. The wind on the drive down had whipped colour into her face, and though her eyes, her dear beautiful grey eyes, homes of kindness and reassurance, still had that pathetic tiredness, she looked gayer and fresher than he had yet seen her. She laughed, she talked, she was delighted with all she saw, she was evidently happy,—happy with him, happy to spend an afternoon alone with him.
They had the cheerfullest tea in a window of the Mitre, and compared to them the other people at the other tables were solemn and bored. Not that they saw any other people; at least Christopher didn’t, for he saw only Catherine, and he ate watercress and jam and radishes and rock-cakes quite unconsciously, drinking in every word she said, laughing, applauding, lost in wonder at what seemed to him evidences of a most unusual and distinguished intelligence. Once he thought of Lewes, no doubt at that moment with his long nose in his books, and how for hours he would prose on, insisting on the essential uninterestingness and unimportance of a woman’s mind. Fool; ignorant fool. He should hear Catherine. And even when she said quite ordinary things, things which in other people would be completely ordinary, the way she said them, the soft turned-upness of her voice at the ends of her sentences, the sweet effect as of the cooing of doves he had noticed the first day, made them sound infinitely more important and arresting than anything that idiotic Lewes, churning out his brain stuff by the yard, could ever say. Male and female created He them, thought Christopher, gazing at her, entranced by the satisfaction, the comfort, the sense of being completed, her presence gave him. Admirable arrangement of an all-wise Providence, this making people in pairs. To have found one’s other half, to be with her after the sterile loneliness with Lewes and the aridity of his own sketchy and wholly hateful previous adventures in so-called love, was like coming home.
‘You’re such a little comfort,’ he said, suddenly leaning across the table and laying his hand on hers.
And she stared at him at this with such startled eyes and turned so very red that he not only took his hand away again instantly but begged her pardon.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning red in his turn. ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
He mustn’t even touch her hand. How was he going to manage? He wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. He loved her too much. He must get things on a satisfactory basis. He must propose to her.
He proposed that evening.
Not in the taxi, because it was open, it rattled, and there were tram-lines. Also she had gone pensive again, and it frightened him to see how easily she took fright. If her gaiety had been ruffled aside by that one brief touch of her hand at tea, what mightn’t happen if he proposed? Suppose she sent him away and wouldn’t ever see him again? Then he would die; he knew he would. He couldn’t risk such a sentence. He would wait; he would manage; he would continue to exercise his wonderful self-control.
But he wasn’t able to after all.