“Are you tired?” asked Wilbraham, “or shall we go down to the shore? I think you wanted to see the caves?”
“I wanted so much to see a flying-fish. I think it must look so odd, don’t you? But then, of course, if we went, we might not see one. Shall we sit on this bank?”
“If you like.”
“And talk?”
“That too—if you like.”
“I wanted to say something.”
He bit his lip, used to Sylvia’s utterances.
“Well, my dear child, I’m listening.”
He was not thinking of her. His mind had shot away to Teresa, Teresa with an angry light in her eyes, for which he loved her the more. Hopeless, he would not have had her different; but different—to him—what might she not have been! Suddenly, unexpectedly, a word of Sylvia’s caught his attention.
“I don’t think that people ought to marry unless they love each other. Every one always says they ought not,” she was remarking in a nervously excited voice. “I think we had better give it up.”