‘You mean I had better not? How should I talk to other people, when even you do not understand me?’
The other boy was silent. He was thinking. ‘What was I like?’ he asked presently—‘in your dreams, I mean?’ Then quickly, and before his companion could reply, ‘No; you need not tell me.’
‘You do not care for me to talk to you in this way?’ Graham questioned half sadly, and with a strange feeling of loneliness creeping over him. ‘You were beautiful,’ he whispered under his breath; ‘more beautiful than any one I have ever seen.’
A long silence followed. If Brocklehurst were surprised by his new friend’s last words, he at least showed nothing. The wind stirred faintly above their heads, and a flock of rooks flew homeward across the grey sky. It was already getting late. The world seemed to have floated into a clinging frosty haze, through which a golden moon gleamed, rising slowly up above the bare, desolate fields.
‘We had better be going back,’ Brocklehurst said. ‘It is getting dark.’
They walked slowly toward the school through the gathering dusk. To feel his companion close beside him, and to be alone with him like this, gave Graham an exquisite pleasure. If only he could be brave enough to put his hand upon his shoulder! All the way home he kept telling himself he would do so when they reached such and such a point in the road; but each time a curious shyness deterred him, each time his courage failed him; and when they at last reached the school, and his opportunity was gone, he felt as if he had allowed something precious and unrecoverable to slip away for ever.