He still said nothing. He waited. He would give her time. Her words had been familiar, but not penitent. They had hardly been the right beginning for an expression of contrition; but he would see what she said next.
What she said next was, 'Haven't we been silly,'—and, more familiarity, she put one arm round his knees and held them close against her face.
'We?' said Wemyss. 'Did you say we?'
'Yes,' said Lucy, her cheek against his knee. 'We've been wasting time.'
Wemyss paused before he made his comment on this. 'Really,' he then said, 'the way you include me shows very little appreciation of your conduct.'
'Well, I've been silly then,' she said, lifting her head and smiling up at him.
She simply couldn't go on with indignations. Perhaps they were just ones. It didn't matter if they were. Who wanted to be in the right in a dispute with one's lover? Everybody, oh, but everybody who loved, would passionately want always to have been in the wrong, never, never to have been right. That one's beloved should have been unkind,—who wanted that to be true? Who wouldn't do anything sooner than have not been mistaken about it? Vividly she saw Everard as he was before their marriage; so dear, so boyish, such fun, her playmate. She could say anything to him then. She had been quite fearless. And vividly, too, she saw him as he was when first they met, both crushed by death,—how he had comforted her, how he had been everything that was wonderful and tender. All that had happened since, all that had happened on this particular and most unfortunate day, was only a sort of excess of boyishness: boyishness on its uncontrolled side, a wave, a fit of bad temper provoked by her not having held on to her impulses. That locking her out in the rain,—a schoolboy might have done that to another schoolboy. It meant nothing, except that he was angry. That about sexual allure——oh, well.
'I've been very silly,' she said earnestly.
He looked down at her in silence. He wanted more than that. That wasn't nearly enough. He wanted much more of humbleness before he could bring himself to lift her on to his knee, forgiven. And how much he wanted her on his knee.
'Do you realise what you've done?' he asked.