Erna and the other girls were looking at her with something like respect and for the first time Flip felt that she had triumphed.
8
The next afternoon, after Sunday Quiet Hour, Flip slipped off to the chateau again. Paul was expecting her.
"Hello, Flip!" Paul shouted as soon as he saw her.
"Hello!" she shouted back. She hurried across the rough ground to where he was waiting for her by the loose shutter. But when she reached him they both fell silent, somehow overcome with shyness. Paul ran his fingers over the flaking paint of the shutter and Flip searched about wildly in her mind for something to say. Gloria or Sally or Esmée would know what to say to a boy; they had all been on dates; but Flip could not think of any words that would not sound inane.
Then she looked at Paul's face, at the shadowed eyes and the strong sensitive line of jaw, and the way his mouth was tight as though his teeth were clenched and she felt that the things that Gloria or Sally or Esmée would say to Paul would not be the right things. She knew that they would say them, anyhow, unaware of their wrongness, and that they would think that Paul was handsome and romantic; but as she watched Paul standing there silently she felt with a sudden rush of confidence that he would prefer someone whose words were clumsy and inadequate, but honest, to someone whose words were glib and superficial; and this sudden sureness broke her fear of the silence and she no longer sought frantically for words.
Then, because there was no longer any need to fear the silence she was able to break it. "Where's Ariel?"
"He stayed home with my father," Paul said.
"Are you sure you don't mind because I came back?" she asked. "Because if you'd rather be alone I'll just go on walking somewhere."
"No—no—" Paul said quickly. "I'm sorry. We live alone and sometimes my father goes a whole day without saying anything. Of course some days he talks a great deal and reads to me but I get used to being with someone and not talking."