“Would YOU like to travel?” he asked as though that was an extraordinary idea.
“Do you think EVERY girl wants to sit at home and rock a cradle?”
“I never thought YOU did.”
“Then what did you think I wanted?”
“What DO you want?”
She held her arms out widely, and the moonlight shone in her eyes as she turned her face to him.
“Just what you want,” she said; “—THE WHOLE WORLD!
“Life is like a feast,” she went on; “it is spread before everybody and nobody must touch it. What am I? Just a prisoner. In a cottage garden. Looking for ever over a hedge. I should be happier if I couldn't look. I remember once, only a little time ago, there was a cheap excursion to London. Our only servant went. She had to get up at an unearthly hour, and I—I got up too. I helped her to get off. And when she was gone I went up to my bedroom again and cried. I cried with envy for any one, any one who could go away. I've been nowhere—except to school at Chichester and three or four times to Emsworth and Bognor—for eight years. When you go”—the tears glittered in the moonlight—“I shall cry. It will be worse than the excursion to London.... Ever since you were here before I've been thinking of it.”
It seemed to Benham that here indeed was the very sister of his spirit. His words sprang into his mind as one thinks of a repartee. “But why shouldn't you come too?” he said.
She stared at him in silence. The two white-lit faces examined each other. Both she and Benham were trembling.