“God! how it blows!” he cried. He drew her to the sofa, and seated himself beside her.
“I’m not in the way, am I? You weren’t lying down?”
“No.” She laughed brightly. “I don’t do those nice reposeful things even on a Sunday afternoon. Mother is resting though, and I imagine every one else in the house. There is nothing much to do with a black south-easter blowing.”
“We won’t disturb them,” he said, and smiled at her. “I am needing at the moment only you. You don’t mind if I stay?”
She looked surprised at this question, and answered in the negative.
“You’ve made me dependent on you somehow,” he explained. “I’ve never felt so intolerably lonely as during this past week. You ought not to teach me to rely on you and then send me into banishment. It isn’t kind.”
“But,” she protested quickly, a soft amazement in her voice, “I never suggested that I didn’t wish to see you.”
“I know,” he said, “but...”
He paused, and regarded her fixedly. Their eyes met for a moment; then she turned her gaze from his deliberately and looked out through the window, an expression of distressed embarrassment sweeping over her face. He stretched an arm along the back of the sofa behind her and leaned slightly towards her.
“That isn’t enough,” he said—“not as things stand. You see, I can’t always have your comradeship that way. The time will come—it’s approaching now—when my work will take me away from here. What’s the good of friendship then? When I go, I’ll miss you—as I have missed you this week. I can’t face it. I’ve grown to want you. I want to keep you with me. There’s only one way to do that, and I’m not sure you’ll agree to it. Had I been sure I’d have said all this weeks ago. But you... you haven’t let me somehow. You’ve held me off. And since that day at the Monument I’ve been conscious of—a sort of estrangement. You made me feel that I haven’t enough to offer—”