“Yes,” she observed at length, “a very charming letter.”
Rodney’s face was half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the pages once more.
“I see no harm,” William blurted out, “in helping her—with Greek, for example—if she really cares for that sort of thing.”
“There’s no reason why she shouldn’t care,” said Katharine, consulting the pages once more. “In fact—ah, here it is—‘The Greek alphabet is absolutely fascinating.’ Obviously she does care.”
“Well, Greek may be rather a large order. I was thinking chiefly of English. Her criticisms of my play, though they’re too generous, evidently immature—she can’t be more than twenty-two, I suppose?—they certainly show the sort of thing one wants: real feeling for poetry, understanding, not formed, of course, but it’s at the root of everything after all. There’d be no harm in lending her books?”
“No. Certainly not.”
“But if it—hum—led to a correspondence? I mean, Katharine, I take it, without going into matters which seem to me a little morbid, I mean,” he floundered, “you, from your point of view, feel that there’s nothing disagreeable to you in the notion? If so, you’ve only to speak, and I never think of it again.”
She was surprised by the violence of her desire that he never should think of it again. For an instant it seemed to her impossible to surrender an intimacy, which might not be the intimacy of love, but was certainly the intimacy of true friendship, to any woman in the world. Cassandra would never understand him—she was not good enough for him. The letter seemed to her a letter of flattery—a letter addressed to his weakness, which it made her angry to think was known to another. For he was not weak; he had the rare strength of doing what he promised—she had only to speak, and he would never think of Cassandra again.
She paused. Rodney guessed the reason. He was amazed.
“She loves me,” he thought. The woman he admired more than any one in the world, loved him, as he had given up hope that she would ever love him. And now that for the first time he was sure of her love, he resented it. He felt it as a fetter, an encumbrance, something which made them both, but him in particular, ridiculous. He was in her power completely, but his eyes were open and he was no longer her slave or her dupe. He would be her master in future. The instant prolonged itself as Katharine realized the strength of her desire to speak the words that should keep William for ever, and the baseness of the temptation which assailed her to make the movement, or speak the word, which he had often begged her for, which she was now near enough to feeling. She held the letter in her hand. She sat silent.