There was another pause. Then Charlotte said, 'Thank you.'
What else was she to say? What does one say in such a case? Our governesses teach us how pleasant and amiable an adornment is politeness, but not one of mine ever told me what I was to say when confronted by an announcement that I was to be included in somebody's prayers. If Charlotte, anxious to be polite, had said, 'Oh, please don't let him trouble,' the bishop's wife would have been shocked. If she had said what she felt, and wholly declined to be prayed for at all by strange bishops, Mrs. Harvey-Browne would have been horrified. It is a nice question; and it preoccupied me for the rest of the time we sat there, and we sat there a very long time; for although Charlotte was manifestly sorely tried by Mrs. Harvey-Browne I had great difficulty in getting her away. Each time I suggested going back to our lodgings to bed she made some excuse for staying where she was. Everybody else seemed to have gone to bed, and even Ambrose, who had been bicycling all day, had begun visibly to droop before I could persuade her to come home. Slowly she walked along the silent sands, slowly she went into the house, still more slowly into her bedroom; and then, just as Gertrud had blessed me and blown out my candle in one breath, in she came with a light, and remarking that she did not feel sleepy sat down on the foot of my bed and began to talk.
She had on a white dressing-gown, and her hair fell loose about her face, and she was very pale.
'I can't talk; I am much too sleepy,' I said, 'and you look dreadfully tired.'
'My soul is tired—tired out utterly by that woman. I wanted to ask you if you won't come away with me to-morrow.'
'I can't go away till I have explored these heavenly forests.'
'I can't stay here if I am to spend my time with that woman.'
'That woman? Oh Charlotte, don't call her such awful names. Try and imagine her sensations if she heard you.'
'Why, I shouldn't care.'
'Oh hush,' I whispered, 'the windows are open—she might be just outside on the beach. It gives me shivers only to think of it. Don't say it again. Don't be such an audacious German. Think of Oxford—think of venerable things like cathedral closes and bishops' palaces. Think of the dignity and deference that surround Mrs. Harvey-Browne at home. And won't you go to bed? You can't think how sleepy I am.'