“What are you looking at, Clemence?” he said, boyishly.
She lifted her eyes to his quite gravely and simply.
“Only the sea,” she said. “It is so beautiful, I feel as if I never could leave off looking at it. It makes me feel—oh, I can’t tell you, but it is like something great and strong to take away with one!” She looked away again. “Oh, I wish, I wish we need not go!” she said with a little sigh.
“I wish we needn’t,” returned Julian; he had been dimly conscious of something in her eyes and voice which made her previous words, simple as they seemed, almost unintelligible to him, and he caught at her last sentence as containing an idea to which he could respond. “It’s an awful nuisance, isn’t it? And do you know it is time we started? Never mind. We’ll come down again soon!”
They stood for another moment; Clemence looking out at the sunny sea, Julian taking another careless comprehensive view of the whole scene; and then, as though those last looks had contained their respective farewells, they turned with one accord and walked away in the direction of the railway station. And as if in turning her back upon the sunlit sea she had turned her back also upon something less definite and tangible, a certain gravity and wistfulness crept gradually over Clemence’s face as they went; crept over it to settle down into a sadness most unusual to it as the train carried them quickly away towards London. Julian, sitting opposite her, was vaguely struck by her expression.
“Are you awfully sorry to go back, Clemence?” he said.
She started slightly, and looked at him with a faint smile.
“I suppose I am!” she said. “We have been very happy, haven’t we?” There was a wistful regret in her voice which touched him somehow, and he answered her demonstratively, with a cheery and enthusiastic augury for the future. Clemence smiled again; again rather faintly. “I know!” she said. “I mean I hope so. Only—I don’t know what’s the matter with me! I feel as if—something were finished!”
Julian broke into a boyish laugh. Her depression was by no means displeasing to him; it was a tribute to his importance, to her dependence on him; and the necessity for “cheering her up” implied the exercise of that superiority and authority in which he delighted.
“Why, what a dear little goose you are, Clemence!” he said, leaning forward to take her hands in his. “A ‘Friday to Monday’ can’t last for ever, you know, but it can be repeated again and again. Why, I shall be up every day—every single day, I promise you. I shouldn’t wonder if I found I could spend the evening with you to-morrow! Won’t that console you?”