"Here, I say, don't, Bessie!" he cried nervously. "You look awfully uncanny when you do that! You're brooding," he continued, "that's what you're doing, brooding. You're getting into a low state. You want bucking up. I don't think I shall go to the Polytec. to-night; I shall stay and cheer you up. You know, I really don't think you're making an effort, darling."
His last words seemed to strike her. They seemed to fit in with something of which she too was conscious. "Not making an effort …" she wondered how he knew that. She felt in some vague way that it was important that she should make an effort.
For, while her dream ever evaded her, and yet never ceased to call her with such a voice as he who reads on a magic page of the calling of elves hears stilly in his brain, yet somehow behind the seduction was another and a sterner voice. There was warning as well as fascination. Beyond that edge at which she strained on tiptoe, mingled with the jocund calls to Hasten, Hasten, were deeper calls that bade her Beware. They puzzled her. Beware of what? Of what danger? And to whom?…
"How do you mean, I'm not making an effort, Ed?" she asked slowly, again looking into the fire, where the kettle now made a gnat-like singing.
"Why, an effort to get all right again. To be as you used to be—as, of course, you will be soon."
"As I used to be?" The words came with a little check in her breathing.
"Yes, before all this. To be yourself, you know."
"Myself?"
"All jolly, and without these jerks and jumps. I wish you could get away.
A fortnight by the sea would do you all the good in the world."
She knew not what it was in the words "the sea" that caused her suddenly to breathe more deeply. The sea!… It was as if, by the mere uttering of them, he had touched some secret spring, brought to fulfilment some spell. What had he meant by speaking of the sea?… A fortnight before, had somebody spoken to her of the sea it would have been the sea of Margate, of Brighton, of Southend, that, supplying the image that a word calls up as if by conjuration, she would have seen before her; and what other image could she supply, could she possibly supply, now?… Yet she did, or almost did, supply one. What new experience had she had, or what old, old one had been released in her? With that confused, joyous dinning just beyond the range of physical hearing there had suddenly mingled a new illusion of sound—a vague, vast pash and rustle, silky and harsh both at once, its tireless voice holding meanings of stillness and solitude compared with which the silence that is mere absence of sound was vacancy. It was part of her dream, invisible, intangible, inaudible, yet there. As if he had been an enchanter, it had come into being at the word upon his lips. Had he other such words? Had he the Master Word that—(ah, she knew what the Master Word would do!)—would make the Vision the Reality and the Reality the Vision? Deep within her she felt something—her soul, herself, she knew not what—thrill and turn over and settle again….