“No. I must have that hour of talk by the sea. You are free to answer me or not, but your presence you must grant me. We are in an ideal world remember. We care nothing for all the sons and daughters of men. You and I will spend this one day together between cloudless heaven and silent earth—a memory for lifetime. At nightfall you will come out again, and meet me down by the sea, where you stood when I first saw you yesterday.”
Rhoda made no reply. She looked away from him at the black, deep water.
“What an opportunity,” he went on, raising his hand to point at the cottage, “for saying the silliest of conceivable things!”
“What might that be, I wonder?”
“Why, that to dwell there together for the rest of our lives would be supreme felicity. You know the kind of man that would say that.”
“Not personally, thank goodness!”
“A week—a month, even—with weather such as this. Nay, with a storm for variety; clouds from the top of Scawfell falling thick about us; a fierce wind shrieking across the tarn; sheets and torrents and floods of rain beating upon our roof; and you and I by the peat-fire. With a good supply of books, old and new, I can picture it for three months, for half a year!”
“Be on your guard. Remember “that kind of man”.”
“I am in no danger. There is a vast difference between six months and all one’s life. When the half-year was over we would leave England.”
“By the Orient Express?”