The bookseller looked up at the bust of William Morris on his poetry shelves and winked. Then he tip-toed away.
Clara forgave him for not moving to meet her. His directness of speech satisfied her as to his strength and honesty.
Neither was disposed to waste time. Their intimacy had begun at their first meeting.
'It is too hot in London,' he said. 'Shall we walk out to Highgate or Hampstead?'
Clara wanted to touch him, to make certain that he was really a man and not a mere perambulating mind, and she laid her hand on his arm. It was painfully thin, and she knew instinctively that he was not properly cared for, and then again she was full of mistrust. Was it only her sympathy that involved her life with his? ... The shock of it had made it perfectly clear that in Charles, as a man, she had never had the smallest interest. That had been disastrous, and she shrank from creating more trouble by her impetuosity. To hurt this man would be serious. No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy boy or a blackbird in a cherry-tree in blossom.
They went by tube to Highgate, making no attempt to talk through the clatter and roar of the train in the tunnel.
As they walked up the long hill he said,—
'You have knocked me out. I never thought any one would do that. I never thought I should meet any one as strong as myself.... Love's a terrible thing. The impact of two personalities. It breaks everything else, leaves no room for anything else.'
'I hoped it would make you happy,' said Clara, accepting as entirely natural that they should sweep aside everything that stood between them and their desire to be together and to share thoughts, emotions, all the deep qualities in them that could be revealed to no one else. She could no more deny him than she could deny the sun rising in the morning, and for the moment she was content to forget every other element in her life.... It was so inevitably right that, having met in the heart of London, they should turn their backs on it and put themselves to the test of earth, sunshine, blue sky, and trees in their summer green, and water smiling in the sun. The furious energy in their hearts made the hot August day, the suburban scene, and the indolent suburban people seem toy-like and unreal, as though they were looking down upon it from another world, and so they were, for they had plunged to the very beginnings of Creation, and their new world was in the making. So great is the power of love that, extracting all the truth from the world as men have made it, it sweeps the rest away and begins again, discarding, destroying, but most tenderly preserving all that is vital and of worth. Love takes its chosen two, and weaves a spell about them, to preserve them from the fretting contact of the world, that they may have the power to withstand the agony of creation which sweeps through them, and never rests until they are forged into one soul, one world, or parted, broken and cast down.
Of these two it was Rodd who suffered most. The fierce will that had maintained him in his long labours for the art he worshipped would not yield. He wanted both, his work and this sudden, surprising girl who had walked into his life, and he wanted both upon his own terms. At the same time the conflict set up in him made him only the more sensitive to beauty and to the simple delights of the gardens and fields through which they passed.... This was new for him. He had enjoyed such things before only with a remote aesthetic detachment.