Yet now such a person had come, and behold, her presence, so far from breaking the charm, merged with and intensified it,—supplied indeed the one feature needed to perfect it. A person of his own sort? The expression is convenient. A fellow citizen, certainly, of his period, wearing its clothes, speaking its speech. But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who lived and breathed, it became dynamic. That was all very well; if he could have let it rest at that, if he could have confined his interest in her, his feeling about her, to the plane of pure æsthetics, he would have had nothing to complain of. But the mischief was that he couldn't. The thing that perplexed and annoyed him,—and humiliated him too, in some measure,—was a craving that had sprung up over-night, and was now strong and constant, to get into personal touch with her, to make her acquaintance, to talk with her; to find out a little what manner of soul she had, to establish some sort of human relation with her. It wasn't in the least as yet a sentimental craving; or, if it was, John at any rate didn't know it. In its essence, perhaps, it was little more than curiosity. But it was disturbing, upsetting, it destroyed the peace and the harmonious leisure of his day. It perplexed him, it was outside his habits, it was unreasonable. "Not unreasonable to think it might be fun to talk to a pretty woman," he discriminated, "but unreasonable to yearn to talk to her as if your life hung in the balance." And in some measure, too, it humiliated him: it was a confession of weakness, of insufficiency to himself, of dependence for his contentment upon another. He tried to stifle it; he tried to fix his mind on subjects that would lead far from it. Every subject, all subjects, subjects the most discrepant, seemed to possess one common property, that of leading straight back to it. Then he said, "Well, if you can't stifle it, yield to it. Go down into the garden—hunt her up—boldly engage her in conversation." Assurance was the note of the man; but when he pictured himself in the act of "boldly engaging her in conversation," his assurance oozed away, and he was conscious of a thrice-humiliating shyness. Why? What was there in the woman that should turn a brave man shy?
However, the stars were working for him. That afternoon, coming home from a stroll among the olives, he met her face to face at the gate of the garden, whither she had arrived from the direction of the village. Having made his bow, which she accepted with a smile, he could do no less than open the gate for her; and as their ways must thence lie together, up the long ilex-shaded avenue to the castle, it would be an awkward affectation not to speak. And yet (he ground his teeth at having to admit it) his heart had begun to pound so violently, (not from emotion, he told himself,—from a mere ridiculous sort of nervous excitement: what was there in the woman that should excite a sane man like that?) he was afraid to trust his voice, lest it should quaver and betray him. But fortunately this pounding of the heart lasted only a few seconds. The short business of getting the gate open, and of closing it afterwards, gave it time to pass. So that now, as they set forwards towards the house, he was able to look her in the eye, and to observe, with impressiveness, that it was a fine day.
She had accepted his bow with a smile, amiable and unembarrassed; and at this, in quite the most unembarrassed manner, smiling again,—perhaps with just the faintest, just the gentlest shade of irony, and with just the slightest quizzical upward tremor of the eyebrows,—"Isn't it a day rather typical of the land and season?" she inquired.
It was the first step that had cost. John's assurance was coming swiftly back. Her own air of perfect ease in the circumstances very likely accelerated it. "Yes," he answered her. "But surely that isn't a reason for begrudging it a word of praise?"
By this he was lucky enough to provoke a laugh, a little light gay trill, sudden and brief like three notes on a flute.
"No," she admitted. "You are right. The day deserves the best we can say of it."
"Her voice," thought John, availing himself of a phrase that had struck him in a book he had lately read, "her voice is like ivory and white velvet." And the touch, never so light, of a foreign accent with which she spoke, rendered her English piquant and pretty,—gave to each syllable a crisp little clean-cut outline. They sauntered on for a minute or two in silence, with half the width of the road-way between them, the shaded road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance had come completely back; and with it had come a curious deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment at any rate the world left nothing to be wished for, that the cup of his desire was full. He didn't even, now that he might do so, wish to talk to her. To walk with her was enough,—to enjoy her companionship in silence. Yes, that was it—companionship. He caught at the word. "That is what I have been unconsciously needing all along. I flattered myself that I was luxuriating in the very absence of it. But man is a gregarious animal, and I was deceived." So he could refer the effect of her propinquity to the mere gregarious instinct, not suspecting that a more powerful instinct was already awake. Anyhow, his sense of that propinquity,—his consciousness of her, gracefully moving beside him in the sweet weather, while her summery garments fluttered, and some strange, faint, elusive perfume was shaken from them,—filled him with a satisfaction that for the moment seemed ultimate. He had no wish to talk. Their progress side by side was a conversation without words. They were getting to know each other, they were breaking the ice. Each step they took was as good as a spoken sentence, was a mutual experience, drawing them closer, helping to an understanding. They walked slowly, as by a tacit agreement.
Silence, however, couldn't in the nature of things last for ever. It was she who presently broke it.
"I owe you," she said, in her ivory voice, with her clean-cut enunciation, "a debt of thanks." And still again she smiled, as she looked over towards him, her dark eyes glowing, her dark hair richly drooping, in the shadow of a big hat of wine-coloured straw.
John's eyes were at a loss. "Oh—?" he wondered.