A horrid pause.
"You did it very nicely."
Another pause, not quite so horrid.
And then—"Do you always walk after dark and before sunrise?"
And it was as if he had said, "Why am I always meeting you? What do you do it for? It's queer, isn't it?"
But he had given her her chance. She rose to it.
"I've done it ever since we came here." (It was as if she had said "Long before you came.") "I do it because I like it. That's the best of this place. You can do what you like in it. There's nobody to see you."
("Counting me," he thought, "as nobody.")
"I should like to do it, too," he said—"to go out before sunrise—if
I hadn't got to. If I did it for fun—like you."
He knew he would not really have liked it. But his romantic youth persuaded him in that moment that he would.