"She would have listened to me. She would have realized what I mean."
"Indeed, Clara—poor soul!" he murmured to himself, aloud; "indeed you are absolutely in error. If I have seemed—but I repeat, you are deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing you—I do it even in play painfully—entirely out of the way, unthought of. . ."
"Extinct," Clara said low.
"Non-existent for me," he selected a preferable term. "Suppose it; I should still, in spite of an admiration I have never thought it incumbent on me to conceal, still be—I speak emphatically—utterly incapable of the offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be that she is embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a friend. I received the stamp in early youth. People have noticed it—we do, it seems, bring one another out, reflecting, counter-reflecting."
She glanced up at him with a shrewd satisfaction to see that her wicked shaft had stuck.
"You do; it is a common remark," she said. "The instantaneous difference when she comes near, any one might notice."
"My love," he opened the iron gate into the garden, "you encourage the naughty little suspicion."
"But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I like to see you together. I like it as I like to see colours match."
"Very well. There is no harm then. We shall often be together. I like my fair friend. But the instant!—you have only to express a sentiment of disapprobation."
"And you dismiss her."