'Let us meet at the Crystal Palace next Saturday, dear quarrelsome person. Three o'clock, in the Pompeian Room. I have got an aunt at Sydenham, and I can go in to tea after the concert and hear all about the missionary work in the South Sea Islands.'
XIII
Ensued a new phase in the relation of Simon and Lucy. Once they had met in freedom, neither felt inclined to revert to the restricted courtship of the drawing-room. Even though their chat was merely of books and music and pictures, it was delicious to make their own atmosphere, untroubled by the flippancy of the brother or the earnestness of the father. In the presence of Lucy's artistic knowledge Simon was at once abashed and stimulated. She moved in a delicate world of symphonies and silver-point drawings of whose very existence he had been unaware, and reverence quickened the sense of romance which their secret meetings had already enhanced.
Once or twice he spoke of resuming his visits to Harrow, but the longer he delayed the more difficult the conciliatory visit grew.
'Father is now deeper in the League than ever,' she told him. 'He has joined the committee, and the prospectus has gone forth in all its glorious self-contradiction.'
'But, considering I am the son of an alien, and I have fought for——'
'There, there! quarrelsome person,' she interrupted laughingly. 'No, no, no, you had better not come till you can forget your remote genealogy. You see, even now father doesn't quite realize you are a Jew. He thinks you have a strain of Jewish blood, but are in every other respect a decent Christian body.'
'Christian!' cried Simon in horror.
'Why not? You fought side by side with my brother; you ate ham with us.'
Simon blushed hotly. 'But, Lucy, you don't think religion is ham?'