Regina grew to admire him more and more as their talks together revealed his views and opinions; his wonder at the logical clearness of her mind, the extent of her reading, the leaping quickness of her intellect, increased with each day, and as his passions had always a large share of mentality in them this brilliance of her brain attracted him as much as her soft colour or her waving hair. Every day as she talked with him across the breakfast-table, or listened to him, with wide, interested, reverent eyes, he longed to press those bright lips and draw the dear clever head down on his shoulder.
At last, after some days of unintermittent social gaiety, he said to the Rector, when they were alone: "Look here, John, I don't want you to exert yourself to provide these sorts of amusements for me. I can have all this in town. You know I came here to rest and be quiet and get rid of the fever. I like it best when I can just stroll about in the woods and have nothing to do."
"You're perfectly free to do just what suits you best," returned the Rector, "don't let anyone worry you. The girls are going to some garden-party this afternoon, I believe, but don't let them drag you there if you don't care about it."
"I think I will really stay away this time," Everest answered. "I should like to stroll somewhere in the country this afternoon and so get some exercise."
It fell out accordingly that the feminine portion of the family, exclusive of the youngest daughter, drove away to the garden-party after luncheon, the Rector went to the village to inspect his schools and Everest was left alone to walk down to the sea, to the enchanted garden, to Regina.
She was there waiting for him under the blossom-laden trees, in her prettiest of pale green dresses, and without any speech at all they rushed into each other's arms, and kissed, driven by a wild instinctive, self-preservative longing to make an exchange of that electricity, that had been stored up in each of them for many days, increasing every hour, and, since it was denied any outlet, burning into their own heart and brain, and consuming their vitality.
Those sweet, glad kisses restored the balance of electricity between them and seemed to fill them with new life and energy. It was such a lovely day, where should they go, what should they do? And when Everest suggested walking somewhere, the girl was ready with ideas and plans, like an orderly laying the new route before the colonel.
"Let us walk if you like along the sands to the next village. There is a dear little inn in the bay where we can have tea and then come round by the wood home. Would you like that?" she asked, gazing up to his handsome face, the skin of which looked so cool and clear in the green light of the garden—green light which intensified the darkness of his eyes in their downward gaze upon her.
"Very much," he answered simply; and so they started, descending from the garden by a little gate in the porphyry balustrade, and a steep flight of steps to the hard glistening sands, to walk to Heddington, a small sunlit village lying far back in the bay. That walk, how it remained always in the girl's memory!—that happy walk along those glittering sands, at the border of the purple sea. How her dancing feet carried her along beside him! She felt so joyously conscious of her youth and health. She knew that the sloping sunbeams turned her hair into gold beneath her straw hat, that the purple of the sea and the blue of the sky got into her eyes, and that he was pleased with her as his gaze met hers. And their talk; what a splendid thing it was; its newness, its range over so many themes delighted her. The talk of Stossop always stayed in Stossop, and wearied the girl to death by its inane repetitions, but their talk wandered all over the world and took them with it and up and down the centuries from Palæolithic times, and sometimes it called up visions of Indian coral and they almost looked to see it in the Devon sea, and sometimes it made a distant group of black rocks seem like an ancient caveman fighting a bear. And yet it was all so light and laughter-filled, with none of the pedagogic solemnity of the half-educated person, trying to show the half of him that knows and keep concealed the half which is ignorant.
Everest never talked like a schoolmaster, but as an artist—in pictures; and Regina had nothing of the schoolmistress in her, only that true, deep thirst for knowledge, that had carried her down into the depths of the heaviest learning and from which she had emerged, her brain brilliant and shining, her language full of beauty and supple and keen.