'Take care! Take care!' called Sir Henry.
She leaped down into the heather by his side, and he said,—
'It seems a crime to take you back into the house. What have you to do with whether or no we are asked to the next garden-party in Downing Street? You are Ariel and can put a girdle round the earth.... I am almost afraid of you. Can't we run away and become strolling players? You may think I am to be envied but my life has been a very unhappy one.... I want to help you....'
It was obvious to Clara that he did not know what he was saying, and indeed he was light-hearted and moonstruck, lifted outside his ordinary range of experience. He babbled on,—
'If I could feel that I had done the smallest thing to help you, I should be prouder of it than of any other thing in my career.'
'But I don't want help....'
'Ah! You think so now. But wait three years.... You think an actor can know nothing of life, but who knows more? Has he not in himself to reproduce every fine shade of emotion, the effect of every variety of experience.... The people who know nothing of life are your cloistered artists like Mann, or your Verschoyle drowned in money.... You have not known me yet.'
Really he was getting rather ridiculous with his boyish romanticism. He had been married twice and his two families numbered seven. But Clara, too, was under the spell of the moon, and his gauche response to her mood had touched her.
'Life is a miserable business for a woman,' said Sir Henry. 'I live in dread lest you should be dragged down into the common experience.'
(Did he or did he not know about Charles?)