"Upon my word, you're amazing!"
"Oh! you'll get sick of me. It's all so selfish and slack, I know. But I struggled once—I'm in the grip now." He talked about Borrow and displayed a little grey-bound "Walden" with pride. He spoke of Richard Jefferies with an intimate affection as though he had known the man.
He gave Harry some of his enthusiasm, and he lent him "Lavengro." He described it and Harry compared mentally Isobel Berners with Mary Bethel.
Then they went up to the little drawing-room—an ugly room, but redeemed by a great window overlooking the sea, and a large photograph of Mary on the mantelpiece. Under the light of the lamp the silver frame glittered and sparkled.
He sat by the window and talked to her, and again he had that same curious sense of having known her before: he spoke of it.
"I expect it's in another existence then," she said; "as I've never been into New Zealand and you've never been out of it—at least, since I've been born. But, of course, I've talked about you to Robin. We speculated, you know. We hadn't any photographs much to help us, and it was quite a good game."
"Ah! Robin!"
"I want to speak to you about him," she said, turning round to him. "You won't think me interfering, will you? but I've meant to speak ever since the other day. I was afraid that, perhaps—don't think it dreadfully rude of me—you hadn't quite understood Robin. He's at a difficult age, you know, and there are a lot of things about him that are quite absurd. And I have been afraid that you might take those absurdities for the real things and fancy that that was all that was there. Cambridge—and other things—have made him think that a certain sort of attitude is essential if you're to get on. I don't think he even sincerely believes in it. But they have taught him that he must, at least, seem to believe. The other things are there all right, but he hides them—he is almost ashamed of any one suspecting their existence."
"Thank you!" Harry said quietly. "It is very kind of you and I'm deeply grateful. It's quite true that Robin and I haven't seemed to hit it off properly. I expect that it is my fault. I have tried to see his point of view and have the same interests, but every effort that I've made has seemed to make things worse. He distrusts me, I think, and—well—of course, that hurts. All the things in which I had hoped we would share have no interest for him."
"Don't you think, perhaps," she said, "that you've been a little too anxious—perhaps, a little too affectionate? I am speaking like this because I care for Robin so much. We have been such good friends for years now, and I think he has let me see a side of him that he has hidden from most people. He is curiously sensitive, and really, I think, very shy; and most of all, he has a perfect horror of being absurd. That is what I meant about your being affectionate. He would think, perhaps, that the rest were laughing at him. It's as if you were dragging something that was very sacred and precious out into the light before all those others. Boys are like that; they are terrified lest any one should know what good there is in them—it isn't quite good form."