“About us? Not she. She’s too much wrapped up in him to notice anyone.”
“And he?”
“Oh, my dear—he’s too much wrapped up in it.” Another anxiety then came to him.
“I say, you know, he isn’t dangerous, is he?” She laughed.
“Dangerous? Oh dear me, no! A lamb.”
II
She kept on saying to herself, Why shouldn’t they come? What difference did it make?
Up till now she had not admitted that anything could make a difference, that anything could touch, could alter by a shade the safe, the intangible, the unique relation between her and Rodney. It was proof against anything that anybody could think. And the Powells were not given to thinking things. Agatha’s own mind had been a crystal without a flaw, in its clearness, its sincerity.
It had to be, to ensure the blessed working of the gift; as again, it was by the blessed working of the gift that she kept it so. She could only think of that, the secret, the gift, the inexpressible thing, as itself a flawless crystal, a charmed circle; or rather, as a sphere that held all the charmed circles that you draw round things to keep them safe, to keep them holy.
She had drawn her circle round Rodney Lanyon and herself. Nobody could break it. They were supernaturally safe.