She made a little deprecating gesture. He was almost too kind to her; too kind. But nobody could reasonably object to being loved like crystals and clearness after rain. Robert couldn't possibly mind that.
She cast about for things to say back, shining things to match his, but he found them all first; it was impossible to keep up with him.
"You are delicate and fine, like translucent gold," he said. "And you are brave, and various, and alive. And you are full of sweet little fancies, little swirls of mood, kind eager things. Never in my life is there the remotest chance that I shall meet so good and deep a happiness as you again, and I put my heart once and for all between your dear cool little hands."
She felt bent beneath this generosity, she who had been so tiresome; and not only tiresome, but she who had had doubts, unworthy ones she now saw, round about breakfast time, for instance, piercing through her silly delight in Italy, as to whether she were giving even any satisfaction.
"I perceive," he went on, "I've never really loved before. I've played with dolls, and expressed myself to dummies—like a boy with a ball he must play with, and failing a playfellow he bumps it against a wall and catches it again. But you play back, my living dear heart—"
More and more was she invaded by a happy surprise. The things she had been doing without knowing it! All the right ones, apparently, the whole time—playing back, coming up to his expectations; and moments such as those at the Borromean Islands, and when there were picture postcards, and just recently in the tea-room, had not in the least been what she supposed. She had not understood. She glowed to think she had not understood.
"I've been so wearied and distressed with life," he went on, talking in a low, moved voice. "It has seemed at last such an old hairy thing of jealousies and shame and disillusionments, and work falling short of its best, and endless coming and going of people, and me for ever left with a blunted edge. And now you come, you, and are like a great sweet wind blowing across it, and like clear skies, and a moon rising before sunset. It is as though you had taken up a brush and painted out the old ugly tangles and made a new picture of me in luminous, clear watercolour."
Her surprise grew and grew, and her gladness that she had been mistaken.
"Those streaks," she thought. "He didn't really mean what he said about those streaks—"
"Somehow, though quite intelligent all along," continued Ingram, "I've been shallow and hard in my feelings about everything. Now I feel love like a deep soft river flowing through my heart. I love every one because I love you. I can set out to make people happy, I can do and say fine and generous things because of the love of you shining in my heart—"