“What do you mean?” she asked, enormously surprised. All his thoughts had tended to this one object, and it seemed a sign of ill omen that when at length it lay within reach he should draw back.
“You thought I was angry because we didn’t start last week. I tried to be, but in my heart I was glad of the respite. I was afraid. I’ve been trying to screw up my courage, but I can’t.”
He did not look at her, but gazed straight out to sea.
“I daren’t run the risk, Bella. I’m afraid to put my fancies to the test of reality. I want to keep my illusions. Italy has shown me that nothing is so lovely and enchanting as the image of it in my mind. Each time that something hasn’t quite come up to my expectations I’ve said myself that Greece would repay me for everything. But now I know that Greece will have just the same disappointments, and I can’t bear them. Let me die with the picture still in my heart of the long-beloved country as I have fancied it. What is it to me when fauns no longer scamper through the fields, and dryads aren’t in the running brooks? It’s not Greece I go to see, but the land of my ideal.”
“But, my dearest, there’s no need to go. You know I’d much rather not,” cried Bella.
He looked at her at length, and his glance was long and searching. It seemed that he wished to speak, yet for some reason hesitated strangely. Then he made an effort.
“I want to go home, Bella,” he whispered. “I feel I can’t breathe here; the blue sky overwhelms me, and I long for the gray clouds of England. I didn’t know I loved my country till I left it. . . . D’you think I’m an awful prig?”
“No, dear,” she answered, with choking voice.
“The clamour of the South tires my ears, and the colours are overbright, the air is too thin and too brilliant, the eternal sunshine blinds me. Oh, give me my own country again. I can’t die down here; I want to be buried among my own people. I’ve never said a word to you, Bella, but lately I’ve lain awake at night thinking of the fat Kentish soil. I want to take it up in my hands, the cool, rich mould, and feel its coldness and its strength. When I look up at that blue fire, I think of my beautiful Kentish sky, so gray, so soft, so low; and I yearn for those rounded clouds, all pregnant with rain.”
His excitement was unbearable as the thoughts crowded upon him, and he pressed his hands to his eyes so that nothing should disturb.