He sat on the edge of the chair, his hands still clenched between his knees. As for Eve, she was distressed, touched, and perhaps humbled. She told herself suddenly that she had not faced this man fairly, that she had not foreseen what she ought to have foreseen. The room felt close and hot.
“I say, I haven’t offended you? It mayn’t seem quite sporting, talking like this, when you’ve been ill, but, by George! I couldn’t help it.”
She said very gently:
“How could I be offended? Don’t you know that you are doing me a very great honour?”
“Oh, I say, do you mean it?”
“Of course.”
Eve saw a hand come out tentatively and then recede, and in a flash she understood what the possible nearness of this man meant to her. She shivered, and knew that in the intimate physical sense he would be hopelessly repellent. She could not help it, even though he had touched her spiritually, and made her feel that there were elements of fineness in him that were worthy of any woman’s trust.
He had been silent for some seconds, and his emotions could not be stopped now that they were discovering expression.
“Look here, I’m forty-six, and I’m going bald, but I’m a bit of a boy still. I was made to be married, but somehow I didn’t. I’ve done pretty well in business. I’ve saved about seven thousand pounds, and I’m making nine hundred a year. You ought to know. I’m ready to do anything. We could take a jolly little house out somewhere—Richmond, or Hampstead, say, the new garden place. And I don’t know why we shouldn’t keep a little motor, or a trap. Of course, I’m telling you this, because you ought to know. I’m running on ahead rather, but it’s of no consequence. I only want you to know what’s what.”
He was out of breath again, and she sat and stared at the fire. His rush of words had confused her. It was like being overwhelmed with food and water after one had been dying of hunger and thirst and fear in a desert. His essential and half pathetic sincerity went to her heart, nor could she help her gratitude going out to him. Not for a moment did she think of him as a fat, commonplace sentimentalist, a middle-aged fool who fell over his own feet when he tried to make love. He was more than a good creature. He was a man who had a right to self-expression.