"I expect you think I'm a rather silly and rhapsodizing girl, Mr. Heath. Do you mind if I tell you what I think?"
"No, tell me please!" he said quickly.
"Well, I think that, if you've got a great talent, perhaps genius, you ought to give it food. And I think you don't want to give it food."
"Swinburne's food was Putney!" said Mrs. Mansfield, "and I could mention many great men who scarcely moved from their own firesides and yet whose imagination was nearly always in a blaze."
Heath joined in eagerly, and the discussion lasted till the end of dinner. Never before had Charmian felt herself to be on equal terms with her mother and Heath. She was secretly excited and she was able to give herself to her excitement. It helped her, pushed on her intelligence. She saw that Heath found her more interesting than usual. She began to realize that her journey had made her interesting to him. He had refused to go, and now was envying her because she had not refused. Her depreciation of Algiers had been a mistake. She corrected it now. And she saw that she had a certain influence upon Heath. She attributed it to her secret assertion of her will. She was not going to sit down any longer and be nobody, a pretty graceful girl who didn't matter. Will is everything in the world. Now she loved she had a fierce reason for using her will. Even her mother, who knew her in every mood, was surprised by Charmian that evening.
Heath stayed till rather late. When he got up to go away, Charmian said:
"Don't you wish you had come on the yacht? Don't you wish you had seen the island?"
He hesitated, looking down on her and Mrs. Mansfield, and holding his hands behind him. After a strangely long pause he answered:
"I don't want to wish that, I don't mean to wish it."
"Do you really think we can control our desires?" she asked, and now she spoke very gravely, almost earnestly.