Clara laughed. This was taking her too seriously.
'Ah, you can laugh now while you are young, but youth attracts, it is drawn into the whirlpool and is lost.... Is there more in you than youth?'
'Much, much more,' said Clara exultantly. 'There has never been anybody like me before.'
'By Heaven!' swore Sir Henry. 'That is true.... You have bewitched me—and we had better be going back to the house.... Will you let me carry you down?'
Without waiting for her permission, he lifted her, and she suffered him to carry her down the last stony path, because her flimsy shoes were already wet through. He did not guess that she had good reason, and his heart thumped in his large bosom.
It had been a night of nights for him. Years of uneasy distraction had melted away. Not even at the height of his success had he felt so confident, so entirely superior to the rest of mankind as both to command and to deserve their homage. In no play had he ever devised a more romantic finale than this in which he carried his conquered sprite—for so he thought her—back to earth. As he put her down, he threw out his chest and turned to the stars as it was his habit to turn to his audiences, and bowed thrice, to the right, to the left, to the centre, with his hand upon his heart.
Verschoyle was very angry with her when she returned.
'You know how these people think of such things,' he said.
'What they think and what I do are very different,' retorted Clara, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the night air. 'It makes him happy, and, if you are happy with me, he doesn't see why he shouldn't be. Pourquoi pas moi aussi? Men are all alike.'
'It is not the same.... What a child you are! Some day you will love and then you will see very differently.... The old fool thinks you are——'