‘Didn’t I what?’
‘Hate going to bed when my father was away?’
‘Oh. I see. No, I didn’t. I—I liked being alone.’
They stood looking at each other, their candles lighting up their faces. Catherine’s face was surprised; Virginia’s immensely earnest.
‘I think that’s very strange, mother,’ she said; and added after a silence, ‘You do understand, don’t you, that in all I’ve been saying about—about love, I only’—she blushed for the fourth time—‘mean proper love.’
‘Oh, quite, darling,’ Catherine hastened to assure her. ‘Husbands.’
And Catherine, not used to bedroom candles, held hers crooked and dropped some grease on the carpet, and Virginia had the utmost difficulty in strangling an exclamation. Stephen did so much dislike grease on the carpets.
XIII
Stephen came back by the first train next morning, suppressing his excitement as he got out of the car and on the doorstep saw Virginia, standing there as usual, in her simple morning frock and fresh neatness, waiting to welcome him home. Outwardly he looked just a sober, middle-aged cleric, giving his wife a perfunctory kiss while the servants brought in his things; inwardly he was thirty at the sight of her, and twenty at the touch of her. She, suppressing in her turn all signs of joy, received his greeting with a grave smile, and they both at once went into his study, and shutting the door fell into each other’s arms.
‘My wife,’ whispered Stephen.