‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was like that the other night—but there was a charm wanting.’
‘Oh,’ Joyce said, still breathless; and she added, with an impulse that was involuntary, beyond her power of control, not what she meant or wished to say— ‘When you were up the river—the other night—passing——’
Did she mean it as a reproach? He looked at her quickly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is true I passed—the very lawn, the enchanted place—and looked and looked, but did not see you.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but I saw you, Captain Bellendean. I saw you go below the bridge steering. It was strange, among all the strange folk, and the boats coming and going, suddenly to see—a kent face.’
She laughed, in a curious embarrassed way, as if laughing at herself, yet with a rising colour, and eyes that did not turn to him, rather avoided him. Norman had a sudden gleam of perception, and understood more or less the little fanciful shock which Joyce had received to see him pass.
‘You could not think it more strange than I did,’ he said, in an unconscious tone of self-defence, ‘nor half so disagreeable. To pass with people I cared nothing for, the same way that has become associated to me with—with—— And to look perhaps as if it were just the same whether it was they or—others.’
He began with self-defence, but ended with an inflection of half complaint and subdued indignation in his tone.
‘Indeed,’ said Joyce, startled, ‘I did not think——’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you did not think about me at all, and I am a fool for supposing you did; but if you thought for a moment that it was any pleasure to me to be there, apart from all that had made it delightful——’
‘Oh,’ cried Joyce, in an anxious effort not to understand this inference which flooded all her veins with a sudden rush of indescribable celestial delight, ‘but the river was as bright as ever I saw it, and the sky like heaven; and why should you not be happy—with your friends?’