“We have been bathing,” he said. “It was the most stupendous bathe that there has ever been.” Then he added, “Why are you alone?”
“The rest went to see a church on a hill or something, but I didn’t want anything except the view; but Lady Gale is still there, at the tent. She told me to tell you if I saw you to come to her.”
“Right you are.” He passed singing up the hill. Maradick stood in front of her, his cap in his hand, then she made room for him on her seat and he sat beside her.
“A view like this,” she said, “makes one want very much to be good. I don’t suppose that you ever want to be anything else.”
“There’s some difference between wanting and being,” he answered sententiously. “Besides, I don’t suppose I’m anything real, neither good nor bad, just indifferent like three-fourths of the human race.”
He spoke rather bitterly, and she looked at him. “I think you’re anything but indifferent,” she said, nodding her head. “I think you’re delightful. You’re just one of the big, strong, silent men of whom novels are full; and I’ve never met one before. I expect you could pick me up with one finger and hurl me into the sea. Women like that, you know.”
“You needn’t be afraid that I shall do it,” he said, laughing. “I have been bathing and am as weak as a kitten; and that also accounts for my untidiness,” he added. He had been carrying his coat over his shoulder, and his shirt was open at the neck and his sleeves rolled up over his arms.
They did not speak again for several minutes. She was looking at the view with wide-open, excited eyes.
Then she turned round and laid her hand upon his arm. “Oh! I don’t expect you’ve needed it as I have done,” she said, “all this colour; I’m drinking it in and storing it so that I can fill all the drab days that are coming with it. Drab, dull, stupid days; going about and seeing people you don’t want to see, doing things you don’t want to do, saying things you don’t want to say.”
“Why do you?” he said.