"I should like to go on sleeping.…"
"Come for a walk, Babs," interrupted Pentyre. "It's my last leave——"
"Then you'd better rest instead of working on my emotions. George, on the other hand, never gets any exercise at the Admiralty, and, as he's never been here before, I think I shall take him round the house. Besides, he hasn't asked me to do anything. Come on, George!"
Oakleigh rose with sufficient alacrity and accompanied her for an hour through the ruins of the Abbey, the Elizabethan reconstruction and the Georgian incrustation. Knowing Barbara, he had secured what he wanted by pretended indifference, though he was less interested in hall and refectory, Prior's house and dormitory than in her knowledge of architecture and early English furniture.
"Another of my accomplishments," she laughed. "George, what sort of reputation have I got? A man was so surprised the other day to find that I could play the piano and sing.…"
"I know what I think of you," he answered. "Possibly you know it too."
Barbara looked away abstractedly, as though she had not heard him. Ever since her illness, George had shewn her a tender devotion; and, when Sonia Dainton and her other friends had succumbed to the war-epidemic of marriage, she had fancied that it would be very restful to marry him. The mood lasted for a week, and it was in this time that she had invited him to the Abbey. Then a dream, of which she could remember few details, had shattered the lazy romance which she was weaving; there was a shadow which she knew would take form as Jack Waring, there was a hint of the wild oath which she had taken when she was mad; and she had decided that God was punishing her by opening her eyes to happiness and then throwing a bar of shadow across her path as she struggled to reach it. Those were the days when she heard that Jack was missing, the nights when she prayed to hear that he was dead. Now that George was at hand, she did not want him; she might find peace by marrying him, but she would find nothing more.…
"Dear George! You think I'm perfect, don't you?"
"Perfection is meant to be more admired than loved."
"I've nothing but my imperfections to make people love me."