"Oh, no, not for a month, at least. At the very least. It must be in England, you see."
"In England?"
"Yes, that's the way it would be...." If we were really in love with each other, of course she meant. He looked at her with new admiration.
They made a few more arrangements. Their talk was pervaded now with a sense of efficiency and despatch. If they could not call reasons by their real names they could call steamships and railroads by theirs, and did. In a few minutes they had everything planned out.
A maid appeared and announced lunch. They nodded her away and sat silent for a moment longer. It seemed as if something more ought to be said; the interview was too momentous to be allowed to end with an announcement of a meal. The sun beat down on them from the zenith with the full unsubtle light of noonday, prosaically enough, but the wind, blowing as hard as ever, whistled unceasingly around their exposed tower and provided a sort of counter-dose of eerieness and suggestiveness; it gave them the sense of being rather magnificently aloof from the rest of the world. The sun showed them plainly enough that they were on a summer-cottage verandah, but the wind somehow managed to suggest that they were really in a much more romantic place. Probably this dual atmosphere had its effect on them; it would need something of the sort, at any rate, to make James stand up and say aloud, in broad daylight:
"Beatrice, don't you feel a sort of inspiration in fighting against something you can't see?"
"Yes, James," she answered slowly; "I believe I do—now."
"Something we can neither see nor understand, but know is wrong and can only protest against with the whole strength of our souls? Blindly, unflinchingly?"
"Yes."
"Inevitably?"