“I feel sure you will come round to my point of view sooner or later. It is so obviously the best thing for him.”
“There’s Miss Glendower.”
“If Miss Glendower is a womanly woman, she will be ready to make any sacrifice for his good.”
And with that they parted.
In the course of another minute Melville found himself on the side of the road opposite the lift station, regarding the ascending car. The boldly trimmed bonnet, vivid, erect, assertive, went gliding upward, a perfect embodiment of sound common sense. His mind was lapsing once again into disorder; he was stunned, as it were, by the vigour of her ladyship’s view. Could any one not absolutely right be quite so clear and emphatic? And if so, what became of all that oppression of foreboding, that sinister promise of an escape, that whisper of “other dreams,” that had dominated his mind only a short half-hour before?
He turned his face back to Sandgate, his mind a theatre of warring doubts. Quite vividly he could see the Sea Lady as Lady Poynting Mallow saw her, as something pink and solid and smart and wealthy, and, indeed, quite abominably vulgar, and yet quite as vividly he recalled her as she had talked to him in the garden, her face full of shadows, her eyes of deep mystery, and the whisper that made all the world about him no more than a flimsy, thin curtain before vague and wonderful, and hitherto, quite unsuspected things.
V
Chatteris was leaning against the railings. He started violently at Melville’s hand upon his shoulder. They made awkward greetings.
“The fact is,” said Melville, “I—I have been asked to talk to you.”
“Don’t apologise,” said Chatteris. “I’m glad to have it out with some one.”