It seemed to him for the first time that he had never thought of what he meant to do about it. He had just worked, passionately, because he had to work. He hadn’t thought of the future at all.
“I don’t know ... I want to work until I can find what I know is here ... I mean in the Mills and in the Flats. And then ... some day ... I ... I want to go back to Africa.... I’ve been to Africa, you know. I was a missionary once.” He thought that from the summit of her worldliness she might laugh at him for being a missionary; but she didn’t laugh. She clasped her hands about her knee, and he saw suddenly that they were very beautiful hands, white and ringless, against the soft, golden sables. He wanted to seize a pencil and draw them.
She didn’t laugh at him. She only said, “Tell me about that ... about Africa ... I mean.”
And slowly he found himself telling the whole story, passionately, as he had never told it before, even to Mary Conyngham. He seemed to find in it things which he hadn’t seen before, strange lights and shadows. He told it from beginning to end, and when he had finished, she said, looking into the fire, without smiling, “Yes, I understand all that. I’ve never been religious or mystical, but I’ve always had my sister Irene. I’ve seen it with her. You see I’m what they call a bad lot. You’ve probably heard of me. I’m only thankful I’m alive and I try to enjoy myself in the only world I’m sure of.”
He went on, “You see, when I’ve learned more, I want to go back and paint that country. It had a fascination for me. I guess I’m like that Englishwoman ... Lady Millicent ... the one I told you about. She said there were some people who couldn’t resist it.”
When he finished, he saw that all his awe of her had vanished. He knew her better than any one in the world, for she had a miraculous way of understanding him, even those things which he did not say. The desire for the jungle and the hot lake swept over him in a turbulent wave. He wanted to go at once, without waiting. He was thirsty for a sight of the reedy marshes. The procession of black women moved somehow across the back of the room beyond Lily Shane. He was hot all at once, and thirsty for the water they carried up the slope to the parched ground.
She understood what he was trying to tell her ... she had caught a magnificence, a splendor, that was not to be put into words. He wasn’t afraid any more, or shy. It was as if she existed in an aura of contagious lawlessness.
She took out a cigarette from a lacquered box. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No.”
“I didn’t know....”