"Or Aladdin without faith in his uncle?" insinuated Kathleen unkindly.
"It was all through you, Kathleen. Just because you weren't at home this morning; and I was restless; and went for a drive on top of an omnibus; and my new job tumbled from the clouds, and I've brought it home in my pocket." He produced a catalogue of Messrs. Dale and Dawson's Autumn publications; educational, historical, and general; fiction, poetry, belles-lettres; Henrietta Street, Covent Garden; and 48 Frederick Street, Glasgow. This he handed to Kathleen as if it were a talisman of rarest powers. She examined it, bewildered; but rather loving him in his mood of boyish enthusiasm....
"They've offered me the post of reader," condescending to simple language for pity of her perplexity. Then he was off again, past recall, drunk with ether, spurring his winged-horse ever faster on its empyreal flights.
"Books. Just nothing but books. From dawn till dusk, books. Books all around me, lining my life. Books in the making. Books my trade. The beginning and end of things, books. Great walls of them, shutting out real things, concrete things, ugly things, noisy things; advertisements and fathers and botanists. Delving continually into a thousand imaginations, treasure-finding; genius-hunting; word-juggling. Can you draw pictures from words? I can. 'Glamour,' for instance. Glamour ... and something elfin, with misty wings, scattering gold-dust; and part of it clings to your eyelashes. That's glamour. And 'fantastic' has a leap about it, and the flutter of rags, and pipes—yes, a figure with a pointed cap, playing on a pipe. You've never seen me gloating over my collection of books ... and every time I add one to the number, counting over all the old ones again ... handling them—the dears! And now to be permitted to make a living out of books—yes, actually; to scoop silver from a moonbeam, spin an income from a cobweb, seek sovereigns in a sea-shell. And there's my own book, too—the one I mean to write; did I ever tell you about it? How I shall be able to write now! My book! Other people's books——!" He stopped for sheer want of breath.
"And—you picked up all this on an omnibus?" eagerly. It was impossible to persist in any sort of gloom in opposition to his charming nonsense.
"Bound for Banbury Cross," Gareth explained, very seriously. "And there came a big spider and sat down beside me ... no, that doesn't rhyme. And anyway it wasn't a spider, though he looked remarkably like one."
"Who did?"
"Old Mr. Dale; Mark Dale, my Uncle Wilfred's crony. The late uncle from whom I'm supposed to inherit my scholarly tastes. I told him my troubles, for all the world as if he were a golden carp or a blue frog or a singing-tree, or some such traditional confidant. We got to talking about books; he put a lot of questions; I acquitted myself fairly well;—and then he suddenly informed me that one of the regular readers for his firm had given notice that morning, and would I care to take his place? Would I care.... And that things should happen like that for me! You should have heard my father yesterday.... And, Kathleen ... dear——" Both her hands in his now. No avail to struggle or sulk. Gareth was being masterful. Gareth was being manly. Gareth was carrying a woman by storm. And Gareth was enjoying it, intoxicated by this novel sense of power and success. He had borrowed her weapons of strength, and believed them to be his own.
"Kathleen, it has got to be. All you said the other night may be true enough for other people—it will be different for us. We're not going to lose now what we found in Alpenruh. And no one can give it to me but you; no one can give it to you but me. It was the ether of Paradise, of El Dorado we breathed—and by God! we'll breathe it now for the rest of our lives." He swept the hair from her face, that she might have no excuse for avoiding his triumphant gaze. "Our lives, Kathleen!"
She said: "I can't—no, I won't marry you, Gareth."