At moments she felt nervous and annoyed by his behaviour; at other times apprehensive and helpless, as though she were responsible for something that did not know how to take care of itself—something immature, irrational, and entirely at her mercy. And it may have been the feminine response to this increasing sense of obligation—the confused instinct to guide, admonish and protect—that began being the matter with her.
Anyway, from the beginning the man had a certain fascination for her, unwillingly divined on her part, yet specifically agreeable even to the point of exhilaration. Also, somehow or other, the girl realised he had a brain.
And yet he was a pitiably hopeless case; for even now he was saying such things as:
“Are you quite sure that your feet are dry? I 299 should never forgive myself, Thessa, if you took cold.... Are you tired?... How wonderful it is to be here alone with you, and strive to interpret the mystery of your mind and heart! Sit here under the pines. I’ll spread my coat for you.... Nature is wonderful, isn’t it, Thessa?”
And when she gravely consented to seat herself he dropped recklessly onto the wet pine needles at her feet, and spoke with imbecile delight again of nature—of how wonderful were its protean manifestations, and how its beauties were not meant to be enjoyed alone but in mystic communion with another who understood.
It was curious, too, but this stuff seemed to appeal to her, some commonplace chord within her evidently responding. She sighed and looked at the mountains. They really were miracles of colour—masses of purest cobalt, now, along the horizon.
But perhaps the trite things they uttered did not really matter; probably it made no difference to them what they said. And even if he had murmured: “There are milestones along the road to Dover,” she might have responded: “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe”; and neither of them would have heard anything at all except the rapid, confused, and voiceless conversation of two youthful human hearts beating out endless questions and answers that never moved their smiling lips. There was the mystery, if any—the constant wireless current under the haphazard flow of words.
There was no wind in the pines; meadow and pasture, woodland and swale stretched away at their feet to the distant, dark-blue hills. And all around them hung the rain-washed fragrance of midsummer under a still, cloudless sky.
“It seems impossible that there can be war anywhere in the world,” she said.